HB 1187, introduced by Rep. Porter requires the department of education to develop standards for cultural competency teacher training and requires school corporations and accredited nonpublic schools to develop policies concerning cultural competency training for school staff and students. As introduced, the bill requires school corporations to teach in a manner that serves the diverse needs of all students, including racial minority students; low social economic status students; English language learners; students who are exceptional learners (as defined in IC 20-31-2-6); and students of various ethnic or religious groups.

I am not terribly excited about this legislation – not because I am opposed to cultural diversity, but because I don’t think the legislation accomplishes much except maybe letting us feel good about how open and diverse we all are. My experience with school corporations, as a student and as a husband of a former teacher, is that they are awash in bureaucracy, red tape, and educational jargon. An obvious disclaimer has to be made here — I am a white male and so perhaps the cultural competency of teachers doesn’t mean that much to me because it was my culture that formed the baseline of my education. In addition, I figure that teachers shouldn’t need a lot of institutionalized instruction in these matters — rather they should come by cultural competency simply out of innate curiosity one would expect in an educator, basic politeness leading to a desire to understand someone of a different culture in an effort to form common ground, and an understanding that to be an effective educator, one has to speak to a student in a language (literal and metaphorical) that they understand.

That aside, I was interested to see some of the amendments offered for the bill on second reading. Rep. Clere offered an amendment that would mandate an extra $1,000 on a teacher’s paycheck for a period of 5 years if they took and passed a written test on cultural competency. This amendment was defeated by a 48-48 vote.

Rep. Thompson proposed an amendment that stripped away “religion” as a component of diversity. This passed 77 – 15. I wonder what the rationale for this is. Is it something simple, such as the idea that ethnicity is more of a driver of cultural diversity than the religion(s) of that ethnicity? Or is it something more nefarious such as a feeling that we shouldn’t be catering to heathens who reject the One True God? Or, more likely, something I have not thought of yet.

Rep. Thompson also proposed an amendment that specified that this did not apply to nonpublic schools which passed 52-42.

Update LafayetteLib has some withering, and accurate, comments about Rep. Thompson’s proposed Amendment #9 which states that “diverse needs” doesn’t include “harmful behaviors.” The “harmful behaviors” in question? Homosexuality, unmarried sex, smoking, underage drinking or getting drunk, using illegal drugs, and overeating. That’s right folks, being born gay is like shooting heroin. What utter horseshit. Perhaps the existence of this amendment demonstrates a need to rethink my position on the necessity of cultural diversity education.