Heidi Stevens: Texas' Ten Commandments mandate doesn't square with attempts to keep ‘individual beliefs' out of classrooms

Chicago Tribune

30-05-2025

In the campaign to keep discussions about race and identity out of classrooms, there's a common refrain: Schools should stick to the basics.
'Teach ABCs + 123s, not CRTs & LGBTs,' campaign signs read in one Texas school board race. (CRT refers to critical race theory, a catchall phrase for lessons that explore how race has shaped America's systems and policies.)
'They're focused more on the LGBTs than the ABCs,' Corey DeAngelis, American Federation for Children senior fellow, said on a Fox Business segment last summer.
'I want our kids to learn about A-E-I-O-U instead of L-G-B-T-Q,' South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace wrote on X in April.
In January, when Meridian, Idaho, middle school teacher Sarah Inama was forced to remove an 'Everyone is Welcome Here' poster from her classroom, school officials cited a district policy against signs that distract from students' education.
'School property shall not be used by personnel for the advancement of individual beliefs,' the policy reads. 'It is the desire of the District that the physical environment of District facilities be content neutral, conducive to a positive learning environment and not a distraction to the educational environment.'
Stick to the basics.
These are straw man fallacies, falsely implying that acknowledging and celebrating the full range of backgrounds, identities and family structures kids bring to the classroom will somehow crowd out instruction time.
But it's not an either/or.
There's plenty of time to help kids tap into their humanity and still learn to spell. It's why we weave music and art and assemblies and sports and clubs and field trips into children's days.
Schools, ideally, teach students the skills they need to survive and thrive. But they also, ideally, help children understand who they are, who they want to become and who they share the world with along the way.
I suspect the stick-to-the-basics crowd knows this though.
I suspect the movement to keep LGBT and CRT and DEI out of classrooms has less to do with protecting instruction time and more to do with creating a climate where only certain backgrounds, identities and family structures are welcome — or even acknowledged.
I suspect 'the advancement of individual beliefs' is fine on classroom walls, in fact, as long as those individual beliefs are shared by the stick-to-the-basics crowd.
Otherwise, I'm not sure how you explain the Texas legislature just passing a bill that requires every public school classroom in the state to display the Ten Commandments.
The bill, which, as of this writing, was set to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, requires every school to 'display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.' Displays must be at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
'By placing the Ten Commandments in our public school classrooms,' Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said, according to NBC News, 'we ensure our students receive the same foundational moral compass as our state and country's forefathers.'
The same forefathers, it's worth noting, who took care to separate church from state in the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the government from establishing or sponsoring a religion.
In 1980, The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all public school classrooms, ruling that Kentucky's law violated the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Forty-five years later, Texas is poised to join Louisiana and Arkansas, both of which recently passed laws mandating that public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments. Will the U.S. Supreme Court hear another challenge to these new laws? It's hard to know.
But what's increasingly apparent is that the push to place Christianity at the center of public education is gaining steam. And that's important context to consider when you hear folks insisting that classrooms should focus on the ABCs and 123s. That's important context to consider when a teacher is made to remove an 'Everyone is Welcome Here' poster because it advances individual beliefs.
It doesn't add up.
There's nothing wrong with schools shaping and engaging kids' hearts and values and beliefs, alongside language and literacy and math. Their humanity is an enormous part of their well-being.
But when you restrict those values and beliefs to a single religion, you're not really protecting children's humanity. Not all children's humanity, anyway. You're protecting dogma. You're taking a public space, funded by and built for all, and making it only welcoming for some.
Don't pretend it's about vowels.
Don't pretend it's about addition and subtraction, when it's actually about exclusion. Our children deserve better.