NBC News obtained an audio recording of the Carroll Independent School District’s executive director of curriculum and instruction talking to teachers about how to operate under the constraints of the new law, known as House Bill 3979.
HuffPost reported Saturday that District Superintendent Len Ledbetter apologized for the administrator’s statements and claimed they were “in no way meant to suggest that the Holocaust was anything less than a horrific event in history.”
The controversial legislation was passed amid a wave of efforts in Republican-led state houses to curb “critical race theory,” “divisive” themes and concepts related to race and prejudice to children.
“Just try to remember the concepts of 3979,” Pedy said in the recording. “Make sure that if, if you have a book on the Holocaust, you have an adversary—one who has other perspectives.”
Gaps and panicked laughs can be heard on the recording, as a teacher asks aloud, “How do you resist the Holocaust?”
Pedi replied: “Trust me. It has arrived.”
US and Texas state flags fly above the Texas State Capitol in Austin(Credit: Reuters)
A Texas lawmaker who drafted the new version of the bill told NBC News that matters of “good and bad” are not subject to the education law.
But the possibility that a wave of conservative education legislation could get in the way of Holocaust education came to the minds of education observers in at least some places last year.
“Under this law, it would be impossible to teach that Nazi Germany was inherently anti-Semitic, or that the Third Reich persecuted Jews simply because they were Jews, because it made the Nazis inherently biased and Jews inherently biased. and would be considered systematically oppressed.” In St. Louis the Jewish teacher Russell Nice wrote in St. Louis Jewish Light About proposed legislation in Missouri in May. Lawmakers there are pushing for anti-critical race theory rules for schools.
The episode comes a year after a Florida school district fired a principal—twice—who told a parent he couldn’t say the Holocaust was “a real, factual event” because all parents were the same. did not share the belief. Florida’s school board has since banned Holocaust denial in schools—as part of a ban on teaching critical race theory.
In Texas, recordings show that Pedi does not necessarily support the new law, but fears conflicts over its enforcement. Four days before training, the Carroll school board overturned a district’s decision and formally reprimanded a teacher who complained to a parent for having an anti-racism book in her classroom.
At one point in the recording, a teacher says she is “terrified”. At another point, a teacher asks whether another book would be needed to balance the classic Holocaust novel “Number the Stars.” The pedi on the recording doesn’t address that question.
“You are professionals. We hired you as professionals. We trust you with our children,” Pedy tells teachers before offering the example of the Holocaust book. “So if you think the book is fine, let’s go with it. And whatever happens, we’ll fight it together.”