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There is not a much stronger argument against Ohio House Bill 327 -- a "divisive concepts" bill -- than the words of one of its primary sponsors.
Consider the comments of Ohio Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, R-Ashtabula, to News 5 in Cleveland. In discussing the Holocaust, Fowler Arthur told the station "You should talk about these atrocities that have happened in history, but you also do have an obligation to point out the value that each individual brings to the table." One wonders what value she believes Hitler, Himmler, Mengele and the like brought to the table.
So incomplete was her own history education that Fowler Arthur went on to say: "What we do not want is for someone to come in (to a classroom) and say, 'well, obviously the German government was right in saying that the Aryan race is superior to all other races, and therefore that they were acting rightly when they murdered hundreds of thousands of people for having a different color of skin."
Does this woman have such a poor understanding of history that she believes "hundreds of thousands" of people were killed by the Nazis, and that they were slaughtered because of the color of their skin.
If students are already being taught history so incompletely that they believe only a fraction died of the more than 6 million people the Nazis massacred, the last thing we need is to restrict the way good history teachers can teach.
No wonder some of the rhetoric these days is so frightening.
The elected officials spouting it have no shame in their ignorance.