TWO MORE ‘HITS’ ON CLASS TIME
Tennessee legislators in the past have rightly criticized various courses, instruction and interruptions in the public school day that take time away from academic learning, particular in the core subjects of English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.
They balked in the past — even in recent years — at too much social emotional learning, and they passed a law this decade that said teachers needed to carefully tread when discussing race, gender and bias.
But just in the past week, they have mandated two areas of instruction that have little or nothing to do with the four core courses.
Both bills were passed by the state Senate on Thursday, having already been approved by the state House, and are on their way to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.
One says students will be taught “age-appropriate and grade-appropriate” information about gun safety beginning in the 2025-2026 school year, and the second directs that schools’ family life curriculum include “the presentation of a high-quality, computer-generated animation or highdefinition ultrasound of at least three minutes in duration that shows the development of the brain, heart, sex organs, and other vital organs in early fetal development.”
To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with children knowing firearm safety, especially if there are guns in the home and irresponsible parents or guardians who leave them where children can access them, and there’s nothing wrong with children learning about fetal development as part of a curriculum-approved science unit.
Our argument against the gun safety course, as we opined on this page earlier, is not the concepts in the course, which include instruction on safe storage of firearms, not touching a found firearm, how to avoid injury from a found firearm, immediately notifying an adult of a found firearm, and general safety related to firearms. Instead, it’s on using the school day to do so. We think a mandatory, once-a-year, afterschool or Saturday morning course, for instance, would be appropriate.
But we also think such a course is putting the safety emphasis on the wrong place. Instead of passing laws that would require safe storage of weapons or gun locks for the gun owner, or measures that would tighten the restriction on who can have guns, how they can be sold, and where they can be carried, the bill is putting the responsibility for safety on the student.
The bill requires the instruction to be “viewpoint neutral,” which is a mercy, but has no opt-out clause. Training, to be developed over the next school year, will be through videos and online material. Live firing, firearms and ammunition would not be permitted — another mercy.
The family life curriculum, where the fetal development online presentation would be included, is presented by teachers for students who are currently enrolled in middle school physical education/health and high school wellness courses. The curriculum, unlike the fetal development presentation, was created by a committee of health and wellness teachers, community professionals, and parents.
The curriculum itself allows parents and guardians to examine instructional materials and opt their children out of it if they decide it is not appropriate for them. However, the Senate rejected an amendment that required parental consent before students could watch the fetal development video, which, as a Democratic legislator pointed out, is inconsistent with Republicans who usually prioritize parental rights in making such decisions for their children.
Although the legislation doesn’t require that public schools use a certain fetal development presentation, it does mention the video “Meet Baby Olivia,” made by an anti-abortion group, as an example.
Understandably, Democrats, who already balk at measures that show pregnant women considering abortion anything about their developing fetus, criticized the example video mentioned as “offensively childish,” “insulting,” manipulative, misleading and indoctrinating. However, Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, insisted it is “medically correct.”
Our opposition is not to the content of the example video but that it would be included in what is an already approved family life curriculum. The committee that approved the curriculum had no say in the fetal development presentation’s addition, so whether it is perfectly in line with, total opposed to or simply superfluous with the curriculum was never considered.
We acknowledge that both the firearms training course and the fetal development presentation will not take a significant total time out of core subject study, but they nevertheless add to whatever else already has been mandated to reduce academic class time. And they both go against the concept — thought to be favored by most Tennessee legislators — that parents will make the final decisions about their children’s education.
It seems to us in these two cases that the talk hasn’t been walked.