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Texas is in the throes of rewriting the curriculum standards for its K-12 textbooks. And that is something to be very, very worried about.

Last week, we posed a question to students via their teachers: What advice would you give to the new president? Their thoughtful responses blew us away.

When many students think of buses and desegregation, their minds instantly go to Rosa Parks and the 1954 Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the larger civil rights fight over transportation took place seven years later with the Freedom Rides.

Trace school integration from 1849 to 2007.

In early 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders continued plans for a Poor People’s Campaign. It would take place in the spring in Washington, D.C. The poor and those in solidarity with them would take up temporary residence and march peacefully on the Capitol and advocate for substantial anti-poverty legislation from Congress. They would demand jobs, healthcare and decent housing.

A couple of years ago, an acquaintance who worked at the local college where I was teaching had trouble sending and receiving emails. She couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why. Then an IT administrator clued her in: Her first name—Gay—triggered the school’s Internet filters. They were set to block any references to homosexuality, gender identity, etc.

Acts of censorship in education perpetuated by a small group with concentrated power go against the principles outlined in the United States Constitution.