By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD — After a number of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students urged lawmakers to offer that curriculum across the state, a lawmaker urged the committee to eliminate much of STEM from the state’s core curriculum.

Students from the Academy of Science and Design, a state charter school and Nashua’s FIRST Phoenix robotics team, told the House Education Policy and Administration Committee STEM education is essential to the future of young people and the state for generations to come.

But Rep. Dan McGuire, R-Epsom, proposed the state remove the arts, world languages, engineering, technology and computer sciences from the statute defining the adequate education the state has a constitutional obligation to provide students.

House Bill 283 would also remove specific areas of study required under social studies as it would the recently approved financial literacy requirement.

McGuire said with declining assessment test scores for students, their time in school would better be spent on the core curriculums of English reading and writing, mathematics and the sciences and less on electives.

“You have to walk before you can run,” McGuire said.

But Michael Bessette, assistant superintendent of Kearsarge Regional School District, said he could support the bill if he wanted a totalitarian society, noting the Germans suppressed modern art, as did Russia and China and that endangers the education system.

“Let’s be honest, you are doing this because you do not want to pay for it, because some people don’t think it has value,” he said. “Let’s look at the fundamental element at play here, this is really just propaganda.”

The opposition to the bill was overwhelming as nearly 30,000 people opposed it on the House’s electronic system with less than 70 supporting it. All of the public testimony, except for McGuire, opposed the bill with some parents saying they would leave the state if the bill passed, because their children would not have the opportunities they love with music and arts.

Artists, musicians, teachers, parents, students, other educators, business representatives and many others called the bill dangerous, many saying it would dumb down public education, harm children, the economy, the state and the country as well as fulfill the “Free State” agenda of defunding public education until it does not exist.

Many spoke about the need for a full, well-rounded education for students to develop both emotionally and cognitively and they need the arts and sciences, language and math, and technology and computers for that to happen.

“Education does not exist in a silo,” Giana Gelsey, the Madbury representative on the Oyster River School Board, told the committee.

Many testifying said passing the bill would further widen the achievement gap between property wealthy community students and students from property poor communities where those classes would be dropped if they were no longer required to provide an adequate education.

McGuire argued his bill does not mean those areas that would be removed would not be taught, but instead it would be a local decision what to offer by school boards and school administrators, who know better than lawmakers in Concord what their communities need.

He noted the list of the current 11 requirements was first approved in 2007 and had additions and subtractions since then.

“For more than 250 years people were taught without the state telling people what to teach,” McGuire said. “Local people know their own situation and can better decide what should be taught.”
Committee member Rep. Muriel Hall, D-Bow, noted McGuire’s bill was almost identical to one proposed three years ago by Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, and asked McGuire if he had been encouraged to introduce the bill. That bill was killed and never made it into law.

McGuire said the bill’s genesis was a meeting with Epsom school administrators who complained about all the state mandates which require them to hire specialists, although the school district’s superintendent Jack Finley would testify at the end of the hearing the meeting was not about mandates but about school funding and said he did not support the bill.

Several committee members questioned McGuire particularly about removing world languages from the list and he noted it would be better to learn to do math at a high level than French because if you are better able to do math, people will be less able to cheat you, you can count money and do your taxes.

“French is nice,” he said, “but is it required?”
Others testified about the need for civics, government, economics, geography, history, and Holocaust and genocide education, which would be removed from the bill, with some noting at this time learning about the Holocaust and genocide would be particularly important for people to fully participate in democracy.

But Rep. Wayne Burton, D-Durham, noted if the bill passed, the University of New Hampshire would not be able to admit any student from New Hampshire because the language requirement would be gone and if the institution lowered their standards to accept New Hampshire students, the university’s accreditation would be lost.

Rep. Mark Vallone, D-Epping, and a retired Epping Elementary School principal, said he did some research and found that if the bill passes the only other country in the world with the same standards as New Hampshire would be Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Mike Corkery of Amherst, who has taught in public schools in New Hampshire for 15 years, said he has seen other states push to lower standards and for vouchers and it is a 21st Century “Jim Crow” with less opportunities for poor students and teachers getting cut to reduce expenses.

Kaitlin Bernier, a member of the Merrimack School District Budget Committee, said the bill would open the door to defunding public education, which is not what the majority of people in her community or the state want.

She called it an extreme right-wing agenda that will drive an increase in students going to charter and private schools because of the lower requirements which will take education funds away from the most vulnerable population.

“It is a purposeful and calculated agenda meant to hurt public education for the rest of us,” Bernier said. “They don’t speak for the majority of my constituents.”
Daniel Krace of Merrimack called the bill a shameful attempt to gut the solid public education system that allowed him to be a critical thinker, a skill he said is needed more than ever now to determine “what is truth and what is a lie.”
He said he was infuriated that kids with bright futures would not have the same opportunities he had as a child.

“If you take (those items) out,” Krace said, “you are dumbing down and it is hurtful.”
The committee did not make an immediate recommendation on the bill.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.