College students who participate in walkouts could be suspended or expelled under a new measure passed by the Tennessee General Assembly on Monday.
The Charlie Kirk Act, named for the late conservative activist, addresses free speech on college campuses.
HB 1476/ SB 1741 would require colleges and universities to sign the University of Chicago’s policy on freedom of speech — and prohibit administrations from uninviting a speaker based on their opposition to abortion or LGBTQ rights.
The problem with “required lessons” for things is always, how do you keep it unbiased and directed. You can’t always assume a benevolent leadership, so how do these required lessons resist becoming political tools to suppress minorities.
For instance, a required teaching on informed voting sounds great on paper, but requiring a course before voting adversely affects lower income individuals even if the material is unbiased, but over time these courses would be used by the party in charge to “inform” the voters why their side is better.
The same could be said for required parenting classes or anything else. Not saying we shouldn’t do it, but it’s not nearly as easy as setting up some courses and making people take them.
Also, how would enforcement work? Not only would it predominantly affect lower income families, (who likely don’t have the money for required classes, and don’t have the time to take them even if they’re free), but what would be the penalty for refusing? There is no good answer, because every single answer will adversely affect the children that the program is trying to help.
You fine them? Congrats, that’s less money for the kid’s care, and is going to make poorer parents struggle to afford basic necessities even more than they already do. It’s going to disproportionately affect poorer people, because they’ll have less disposable income and will be hit harder by fines. It also means richer families can just buy their way out of the classes; if a fine is the only punishment, it’s only a punishment for the poor.
You jail them? Congrats, now you have deprived a child of their parents during their most formative years.
You take their kids away? Congrats, now you have flooded the foster system (which is already on the brink of collapse, and rife with abuse) and institutionalized a “poor family to rich family” child trafficking pipeline.
Additionally, lots of the “parents who don’t want to be involved” are likely too burnt out from working two or three jobs, or actively resent their kids because they had them too young. For instance, lots of teenage parents end up resenting their children in their 20’s, simply because they’re seeing all of their friends go out and party while they’re struggling to afford a babysitter. If you want to make that resentment a thousand times worse, start penalizing the parents further for not having the time to take parenting classes.
Finally… If your answer to the above question is “just make them stop having kids before they take the class…” How? I want to really think about that question. How? Are we going to surgically implant AFAB babies with fallopian tube switches, which only get unlocked after the parenting classes have been taken? Maybe every AMAB baby gets a vasectomy by default, which then gets reversed after they take the class? Because outside of mass-mandated surgical procedures, (good luck getting any surgeons to agree to this, by the way…) you can’t stop biology. The old conservative “abstinence is the only way to stop pregnancy” arguments have been disproven more times than I can count. But every other method requires active effort on someone’s part.
Yeah the only way is free meals at schools so kids go for free food and then stay at after school programs, any conservative alternative is just genocide to be frank, but people don’t like it when you call genocide what it is