Evidence abounds that educators tend to avoid rather than dive into politically hot topics. Such hesitancy has consequences. For example, this reticence, coupled with the politicized micromanaging of curriculum at state and local levels, has had a clear and negative impact on the sciences. The National Center for Science Education found a third “of high school biology teachers fail to unequivocally acknowledge the scientific consensus on evolution” and while 70 percent of secondary science teachers agree climate change is human-made, only 30 percent highlight this scientific consensus to students. Indeed, teachers have lagged rather than led public opinion on progressive issues. An NPR/Ipsos survey, for example, showed parents are more eager for their children to learn about climate change than teachers are to teach it. Today’s “divisive concepts” legislation focuses on history, though it will affect other subjects, especially literature and language. Here, accusations of liberal indoctrination rely on anecdotes. The legislator responsible for Ohio’s bill, when pressed, could not even come up with one. Instead, he essentially admitted the bill was responding not to the reality in schools but to “concerns,” that is, the unsubstantiated fears the bill both gives credence to and stokes. Other recent scholarship also suggests teachers are not using current events to initiate militant leftists. A 2020 study that examined how social studies teachers evaluate news concluded that left-leaning ones “may describe, frame, and present a much wider set of sources as credible in their classrooms than their conservative peers.”