By Grace Hills, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas Republicans and a Palantir-backed think tank want to require students to learn about communist and socialist regimes and pass a civics exam to graduate, all in response to political skepticism by Gen Z.
Sen. Brad Starnes, a Republican from Riley and a former district superintendent, introduced the bill Tuesday before the Senate Education Committee. He brought forward statistics: 19% of Americans under age 45 can pass the citizenship test, 34% of Americans ages 18-29 say they have a “favorable view” of communism, and a rising number of Gen Z and millennials who believe the “Communist Manifesto” guarantees freedom and equality better than the Declaration of Independence.
The statistics were provided by the Cicero Institute, a Texas-based conservative think tank founded by the billionaire co-founder of Palantir — the technology software company that combines government data into platforms for immigration agents. Cicero also lobbies for bills that criminalize being homeless.
More moderate to left-leaning think tanks have found the statistics to be more convoluted. While Gen Z women are the most progressive group in American history, Gen Z men are becoming increasingly conservative — much more so than millennials when measured at the same age. In large metropolises like New York City, where residents just elected the city’s first Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, support for socialism is on the rise.
Starnes’ bill, Senate Bill 381, would direct the Kansas State Board of Education to develop curriculum to give K-12 public school students an understanding of “communist and socialist regimes and ideologies.”
The bill also would require all public and private school students to pass a civics exam in order to graduate high school. Students could retake it as many times as needed, and the bill would respect a student’s individualized education plan.
The questions of the civics exam would be modeled after the U.S. citizenship test.
Examples of questions on the U.S. citizenship test:
Opponents — all of whom work in the education space — repeated a phrase commonly heard in Statehouse education hearings: “local control.” Timothy Graham, director of government relations and legislative affairs for the Kansas National Education Association, said he is tired of saying it.
“What we’re saying is when you guys decide to get into these decisions that are traditionally left to the locals, because that is the ideal place for them to take place, if you’re going to get into that, then give a compelling reason why you should do that,” Graham said. “I don’t think Senate Bill 381 is a compelling reason. I don’t think it addresses anything that we need to be worried about in schools.”
Leah Fliter, assistant executive director of advocacy for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said: “It’s covered. And the teachers have the ability and the competency to cover that as is already described in graduation standards.”
Sen. Doug Shane, a Republican from Louisburg whose kids are home-schooled, questioned Fliter.
“To say that yeah we have courses in American history, yeah that’s true, but the content that’s being taught is un-American,” Shane said. “And this rise of anti-Americanism is fomented and breeding in our K-12 institutions. So to the point about local control, local control went out the door when unfortunately — not every single Kansas public school — but public schools have been used to foment anti-Americanism. And it’s really, really tragic.”
“Is this a question?” Fliter asked.
“It’s more of a statement,” Shane responded.
Fliter looked at the camera used to livestream hearings and raised her hands in apparent exasperation.
Shane, 37, said he was taught in school that Ronald Reagan was America’s worst president and that Nazism rose from a far-right government, when Shane said it actually emerged from socialism.
Adolf Hitler tied much of his far-right fascist ideas to socialist rhetoric — like “our socialism is national” — and both were geared toward appealing to the lower middle class.
“I would imagine that a textbook from 20 years ago is quite different from a textbook being used today,” Fliter said.
Kathy Brown, who identified herself as a Topeka attorney, although she doesn’t appear to be licensed in Kansas, was among seven proponents who testified in support of the bill. There were seven opponents.
“As we see in this Legislature, our public schools are dominated by the left, they describe marxism as ‘Nirvana’, they teach our Judeo-Christian heritage as evil, Satan worshipers and Islam as diverse,” Brown said, without providing evidence to support her claims. “They frame the founders as white supremacists. They’re teaching racism though now, but against a new color — whiteness.”
