Ohio House Bill 616

A bill has recently been introduced to the Ohio House of Representatives “regarding the promotion and teaching of divisive or inherently racist concepts in public schools.” This bills seeks to keep school district boards from choosing educational materials that promote divisive topics, including critical race theory, intersectional theory, or any instruction on sexual orientation that is not deemed “developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards” (though what these standards are remains undefined). This bill would also keep teachers from receiving continuing education credits necessary to maintain their licensure for any trainings they take that are related to these topics, and it would put teachers’ licenses in jeopardy if they are reported as having taught any of these subjects. A full copy of the bill as well as updated information on the progress it has made is available here.

It is the strongly held opinion of Chroma Counseling that there are few things more harmful than limiting people’s access to information as a general rule— in fact, this is a commonly held tactic of abusers used to maintain power and control over their victims. In this current internet age, a plethora of information is available to all of us at any given time. It is our job, as adults, to help children learn how to not only identify trustworthy information but also to process the challenging information they are constantly being inundated with. Removing educators’ ability to speak on these topics stigmatizes such topics; doing so creates an extremely high potential that children will find this information on their own and be incapable of understanding the nuance or complexity of these topics and how they are directly impacted by such things.

All of this, of course, pales in comparison to the fact that bills like this serve to erase our country’s history of committing dehumanizing atrocities to its marginalized people, thus dooming us to repeat them. For a long time, there has been a huge portion of the population that feels shame for their very existence. Queer people and trans people and people of color have been made to live in fear over something they have zero control over. Societal narratives around these identities have been used ad nauseum to oppress people, to force them into silence and hiding, to other them, to harm them, to kill them.

When we teach children they can’t talk about racism or sexual orientation or gender identity, we do not somehow magically remove the reality of these things. Children will still be queer; they will still see racism; they will still question their identities. By teaching children they can’t talk about marginalized topics, we stigmatize said topics and increase the likelihood that they will feel shame for experiencing or observing them. And when children experience shame for their core identities without an safe space or outlet to explore them, without understanding context or nuance, they begin to feel hopeless. And hopeless people—hopeless children in particular—often choose death over continuing to exist in a world that believes who they are is wrong.

Access to information, to trusted sources, to safe and affirming spaces is suicide prevention. Ohio House Bill 616 seeks to remove all of those things from children throughout the state.