I read with dismay an article in the Feb. 19 Monitor about a proposal (HB 544) to ban “divisive topics” in New Hampshire classrooms. Suppressing undesirable topics sounds like something out of the playbook of General Secretary Xi. Shouldn’t the purpose of education be to prepare students to deal with challenges, including divisive topics, not sweep them under the rug or pretend they don’t exist?
What’s worse, who gets to decide what topics are “divisive.” How do they decide, and what’s the penalty for addressing a divisive topic?
John Scopes was fined $100 for illegally addressing the topic of evolution. It was not that long ago in the course of human history that one could be threatened by death for divisively saying that the earth revolved around the sun. When has suppression of thought ever been a good thing to do?
PHIL FUNK
Concord