I spent many years in the classroom with a roomful of students looking to me for knowledge, instruction, and guidance. I can’t imagine looking back into their eyes and telling them that they’re irredeemably bad, that their nation is built on a lie, and that some of them are worth more than others — depending on the color of their skin.

Yet if I were a public school teacher today, that’s exactly what a new rule issued by the Biden administration would force me to do. The proposed rule enshrines critical race theory in the nation’s K-12 curriculum for history and civics. New guidelines will promote “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically responsive teaching and learning practices” designed to incorporate “anti-racism.” The rule cites (and praises) radical scholar Ibram X. Kendi and the New York Times’s debunked 1619 Project.