Texas Teachers Told They Can Teach The Holocaust...As Long As They Present "Opposing Views"

Over the summer, Texas enacted a law intended to end the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. However, one school administrator in a Dallas suburb interpreting the law to exclude the teaching of certain historical events unless an alternative perspective is presented - such as The Holocaust:

A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News.

Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom.

A Carroll staff member secretly recorded the Friday training and shared the audio with NBC News.

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said in response. 

“Believe me,” Peddy said. “That’s come up.”

The teachers inside that room were audibly taken aback. If only the American soldiers who had liberated Buchenwald had been there to listen to such nonsense. They could have given an education of their own.

Say what you will about critical race theory. If you don't like then disagree with it. But to ban it only leads to equivocation on the Holocaust. Indeed, such legislation was opposed in Missouri because it could preclude the teaching of the Holocaust without offering Holocaust denial materials.

I'm old enough to remember when James Keegstra flat out taught that the Holocaust didn't happen. That hasn't happened in Texas - yet. But if this is how the Holocaust is taught in the years to come there will be a lot more Keegstras and a lot more cowardly school administrators like Peddy allowing that to happen all in the name of banning critical race theory.

Texas Republicans can argue this is not what they intended in passing this legislation. But we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We should also know you reach hell much faster with bad intentions.