Beyond the Sound and Fury: The Landscape of Curricular Contestation in Texas
In this new Occasional Paper from the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Hannah Kunzman and Danielle Allen offer a case study on contestation over K–12 civics curriculum in Texas.
Beginning in 2021, state legislators introduced or passed numerous bills intended to shape appropriate content in K–12 social studies curricula. The majority of these bills were, in the language of advocates, “essential knowledge” bills or “CRT [Critical Race Theory] abolition” bills. However, at the same time that these bills were making their way through state legislatures, there were also efforts to introduce, again in the language of advocates, “culturally responsive” curricula or “education equity” bills. Culturally responsive, a term coined by education professor Geneva Gay, describes a curriculum that acknowledges the diversity of experiences and identities that students bring to the classroom. Educational equity also often refers to the inclusion of instruction around structural racism and ethnic studies. In other words, distinctive substantive views about education have motivated two different strategies for shaping K–12 education through state legislation.
These different substantive views have become the site of intense political contestation and have sparked a new iteration of the so-called culture wars. Politicians have hit upon curricular contestation as having the potential for partisan political gain. Their engagement can often distort our view of what are very real and substantively important debates about how young people should be taught. These debates have the political salience they do because they touch upon deeply important ideas and questions. To have productive civic conversations, we must focus on the substantive issues at stake in current debates over K–12 education. This paper aims to shift the focus back to these crucial questions.
Contemporary debates over curriculum introduce questions about what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a citizen, and the role of both parents and educators in raising children who can fulfill the demands of citizenship. The full landscape of contestation is an exchange about models of citizenship and the relationship between private and public actors in shaping the lives of young people. It is also a debate about history. Whose voices matter in our historical narrative? How should we discuss the dark sides of the American story? How should we engage across differences in a democratic society?
This paper offers a case study on contestation over K–12 civics curriculum in Texas. The key takeaways are as follows. First, on-the-ground exchanges are complex and substantive between two camps, an “American greatness” camp and a “systemic transformation” camp. Second, there are many and various spaces of contestation requiring attention, including legislatures, school board elections, and classroom libraries. Third, the debates represent competing interpretations of civic values as articulated by both camps.
Q & A: Crocodile tears, Can the ethical-moral intelligence of AI models be trusted?
As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in everyday decision-making, its role in shaping how people think about ethics and morality is drawing increasing scrutiny. In this conversation with researcher Sarah Hubbard, we discuss insights from her co-authored paper, “Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted?”—examining how AI systems respond to moral dilemmas, and what this reveals about the risks, limitations, and need for greater transparency and human oversight in AI-driven ethical guidance.
Bootstrap Blackness: Black Men, Conservatism, and Party Politics
A new research article by Dr. Christine Slaughter, Research Fellow at the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and co-authors examines the narrative of black men’s political “shift right”. The study finds Black men remain overwhelmingly Democratic, despite growing public attention to ideological divides.
Allen Lab Fellow Hillary Lehr convened a Voter Experience Summit at Harvard’s Ash Center in March, bringing together 25 cross-sector experts to rigorously map the voter journey. This essay explores how that collaborative process could lay the groundwork for new interventions to understand and improve the experience of voting for all.
Allen Lab Fellow Hillary Lehr convened a Voter Experience Summit at Harvard’s Ash Center in March, bringing together 25 cross-sector experts to rigorously map the voter journey. This essay explores how that collaborative process could lay the groundwork for new interventions to understand and improve the experience of voting for all.
After Neoliberalism: From Left to Right brought together hundreds of leading economists, political scientists, journalists, writers and thinkers from across the political spectrum to explore and debate emerging visions for the future of the political economy.
Watch Roadtrip Nation’s Living Civics documentary and hear from leading universal civic learning experts on the power of narrative for civic engagement.
