The opening of a conservative political front on public schools and the teaching of “critical race theory” has provided an opportunity for Democratic and moderate candidates across the country. Democrats have too-long ignored this assault on public education as a campaign issue, but it deserves the prominence that Republicans have given it for the past two years.

What is at stake? First, the right of public school teachers and supervisors to design a curriculum that reports an accurate American history.  Second the right of school board presidents to shut down hate speech in their  meetings. Third, the right of schools to enforce public health measures, such as mandatory mask-wearing.

Because of the success of Glenn Younkin in Virginia in politicizing the “critical race” issue, Democrats have ceded this ground to Republicans in 2022. But his campaign made up its own definition of critical race theory in order to rally parents against it. As Ibram X. Kendi said in The Atlantic,

Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who helped coin the term, recently defined it. Instead, the attacks on critical race theory are based on made-up definitions and descriptors. “Critical race theory says every white person is a racist,” Senator Ted Cruz has said. “It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin,” said the Alabama state legislator Chris Pringle.

With deceptions like this Republicans have seized an issue, which really pivots on whether public school teachers can be trusted to teach history responsibly.  The issue should be redefined as whether public schools have the integrity and the autonomy to teach an authentic history curriculum. If there are infractions, do the public schools have a reliable method of investigating and reporting on what is actually taught?

The methods of reporting on what public schools are teaching consist currently of hearsay. What do white students think they are being taught? If students are asked to reconsider the causes of the E. St Louis riots of 1917, and they hear it was caused by unfounded rumors and racial tension, would that constitute an attack on whiteness? Would it be unfair to compare the assault of white citizens on Black families’ homes in E. St. Louis comparable to the assault of Native peoples prior to the Civil War, as historian Charles Johnson does in The Broken Heart of America?  It may be the facts of American history have altered somewhat since the protesting parents sat in history classrooms twenty years ago.

What if Democrats campaigned on the rights of professional teachers to design curricula with open scrutiny of citizens? That is different than the right of parents to determine what they think a curriculum should say. What if Democrats campaigned on the building of trust between educators and consumers of education? Don’t the American people favor trust over accusations?

The problem is that Democrats yielded the field of local politics to the Republicans without a single blow. And Republicans are prepared to leverage that strength in the field of national politics. Larger lies about “critical race theory” and more deceptive language about “liberty” over “mandates.”   This will be the main field of combat for 2022.

Candidates running for state and national offices should not be surprised or caught off guard by this tactic. They have seen it in Virginia and Ohio prominently, and it looks like Florida will be another school board testing ground in 2022.

“Our governor here in Florida has all but said he’s going to be involved in school board races,” said Descovich, who is a former member of the Brevard County School Board in Florida. “I’m curious to see what that looks like for 2022.”

Democrats and moderate candidates need to prepare for this battle, if they don’t want education to become the most distorted campaign issue in 2022 and 2024. They need loud and eloquent voices for teacher and local autonomy in the public schools, if they don’t want want to be embarrassed in a campaign of disinformation. They need to concentrate their resources where they are most valuable and most needed–in the integrity and autonomy of public education.