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We have been hearing a lot of education-related bills over the past few weeks in the education committees I serve on. These DFL-controlled House committees choose which bills will be considered, and there have been many Democratic proposals containing new state mandates for our schools. (A mandate means that all Minnesota public schools would be required to comply without local choice or opt out.)

Two state mandate proposals heard recently concern requiring certain classwork and instruction for all Minnesota students.

Though I believe some statewide mandates are necessary, I am of the mind that less is better, especially when it involves our schools and children. I believe that we should do our best to default to local control whenever possible so that those who know their children best — parents, teachers and locally elected school boards — can make the decisions that best fit their students.

The first proposed mandate I’d like to highlight is HF 3434, an ethnic studies requirement for our schoolchildren. This legislation would require all students to successfully complete a semester-long “ethnic studies” course to graduate from high school. It also requires that ethnic studies must be taught in elementary, middle, and charter schools.

When most of us think about ethnic studies, we think about studying and learning about the differences and similarities of other cultures, their histories, perspectives, etc. — and that would include serious discussions about the evils of racism.

I think all of us would agree that ethnic studies like this is important to having healthy relationships with our neighbors, both here in Minnesota and throughout the world. This is already required instruction in our current Minnesota social studies standards.

The ethnic studies referred to in HF3434, however, has a very different definition: “Ethnic studies analyzes the ways in which race and racism have been and continue to be powerful social, cultural and political forces, and the connection of race to other groups of stratification, including gender, class, sexuality and legal status.”

This ethnic studies bill would also require the Department of Education to hire “dedicated ethnic studies staff” as well as develop “a model ethnic studies curriculum” for school districts to use. The model curriculum must also include “a power, race, class and gender analysis” and “an intersectional analysis of climate, health, food, housing, education and policy.”

A second school mandate proposal, HF 550, would require “climate justice” instruction for all students in grades 1 to 12. According to the bill, “climate justice means a framework that puts people first and views the effects of climate change as interconnected with forms of oppression connecting climate change to social and economic justice issues.”

Forcing politically charged mandates like these on Minnesota schools concerns me because they will end up pitting parents against teachers and school boards. Parents, teachers and school boards don’t want, nor do they need, this added tension in our schools.

At a recent teachers’ strike rally, the Minneapolis teachers’ union president declared, “Our fight is against patriarchy; our fight is against capitalism.” A statement like this by a teachers’ union leader both saddens and alarms me and is yet another example of inserting political activism into the education of our children.

I know many teachers from my 33 years as an elementary school teacher. Good teachers don’t want to be social justice warriors or political activists; they simply want to teach their students. We need to stop pitting teachers against parents.

As a state, we continue to force mandate upon mandate onto our schools: ethnic studies, climate justice, K-12 comprehensive sex education, bullying instruction and the list goes on. Many of these issues -— and they are important issues — are things that should really be taught at home. However, now our teachers are being expected to teach them amidst all the other requirements that they are already required to teach.

Last session, Senator Dornink and his Senate colleagues stopped over 60 newly proposed burdensome mandates that would have been forced upon our local schools. Now this year, we are hearing reams of new proposals.

These scores of added mandates are not fair to teachers, nor are they sustainable. There is simply not enough time in the school day to teach all these things, much less to teach them well. And by the way, whatever happened to reading, writing and math? These core responsibilities of education simply get pushed more and more to the wayside amidst all of the other requirements.

This school mandate overdrive in the Legislature has become unrealistic and makes it difficult for teachers to do their jobs — and all the while our students have less and less time for the basic instruction they really need.

Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, is the District 27A representative.