Governor Lee's partnership with Hillsdale College is ultimately propaganda | Opinion


Bill Lee   Governor of Tennessee

Adrienne Hinds
Thu, March 3, 2022, 5:02 AM·2 min read


Governor Bill Lee wishes to “teach” US civics to Tennessee children as unapologetic exceptionalism.

We hear the word indoctrination incessantly. There appears, however to be a lack of understanding specifically in the context of the classroom. The action of indoctrination is to teach a group of people to accept, uncritically, a set of predetermined beliefs.

And while teaching is the means of indoctrination, the presentation in the classroom of facts, with discussions, activities and presentations to aid in the understanding of United States history and civics is not indoctrination, the criminalization of any discussions, presentations or activities believed counter to the narrative of American exceptionalism, most certainly is.

Governor Lee has turned over the civics education of our children, the future citizens of Tennessee, to an outside supplier, which uses propaganda, to promote their specific point of view. This opinionated perspective will be disseminated to our public schools by Hillsdale College, a Baptist institution, based in Michigan.

I am at a loss of how Lee’s rhetoric surrounding choice, freedom and parental control manifests as our State government mandating the use of a civics curriculum developed by a random Michigan based, Baptist College. There is dissonance.

To be clear, I am proud to be an American, and maybe a little less proud to be a Tennessean over these last few years. Yet after living with and fighting the challenges that do exist, I understand and know that allowing students the freedom to develop and practice the skills to perform their own fact based critique of a system, does not and will not diminish or damage that system, that student, or that child.

I know and understand that critique, assessment and discourse lead to betterment, change and improvement. It is only when a system is perceived as weak or fragile by those in power, that those in power act “to stack the deck,” to eliminate freedom, silence discourse and demand obedience to control a population and ensure the desired outcome.

Exceptionalism does not equate to perfection and it never has. Even the exceptional among us know there is always room for growth and improvement. Ignoring identified flaws as if they do not exists do not make them disappear.

It is time for Governor Lee to set the example and put his trust in the people who put him in office. We are Tennesseans. We are exceptional.

Adrienne Hinds is currently the Program Director for Business and Economics at Columbia State and the former data governance consulting with the TN Department of Education.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Hillsdale College partnership will indoctrinate propaganda in TN schools