The Nebraska Legislature is considering Bill 1024, a proposal to require K-12 schools to teach the harms of communism and to adopt state standards and tests that ensure students learn a critical history of communist regimes, their atrocities, and how those systems contrast with American democratic principles.
The current state of public education frustrates many parents and conservatives who feel classroom priorities have drifted away from core literacy, civic knowledge, and a balanced view of history. Lawmakers in Nebraska, led by State Sen. Dave Murman (R), want to change that by putting a firm instructional focus on the history and dangers of communism. This effort follows similar moves in other states that aim to reassert civic education and patriotic grounding in schools.
Bill 1024 would require Nebraska K-12 schools to teach about “the increasing threat of communism in the United States and its allies through the 20th century” and “mass killings that have occurred under communist regimes.” The bill spells out a curriculum that is meant to be age-appropriate but unambiguous about the violent outcomes tied to those regimes. Lawmakers argue the point is straightforward: students should know the historical record, including the human cost tied to communist revolutions and dictatorships.
The proposal lists specific topics for inclusion, from the history of communism in the United States to global atrocities linked to communist rule. It mentions events like the Cultural Revolution in China and the broader history of the Soviet Union, and calls attention to the persecution of religious faiths under communist governments. The bill also expects the State Board of Education to adopt academic content standards for the history of communism by January 1, 2027, and to ensure social studies curricula align with those standards.
Murman explained the rationale plainly: “There’s a lot of students, especially in college, and kids that are out of the K-12 school system, who seem to support socialism and even communism nowadays. I think we just have to be diligent that the risks and dangers, bad things that happen under communism, are taught in our schools.” That quote captures the central Republican concern driving the legislation—students are arriving at adulthood with sympathetic views of ideologies that historically produced repression and mass murder.
One notable feature of the bill is a testing requirement mirroring the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization exam. Students would take a written test before finishing eighth grade and again before graduating high school, designed to measure basic civic literacy and familiarity with the material the bill mandates. Supporters say this ensures schools actually teach the content rather than merely listing it in a curriculum document that sees no classroom follow-through.
Nebraska would not be breaking new ground with this approach; states like Florida and Texas have enacted comparable measures emphasizing civic instruction and critical examination of communism and other totalitarian ideologies. The push reflects a broader conservative trend to reclaim civic education and to push back against curricula that critics say gloss over or romanticize socialist ideas. For conservatives, the goal is to restore clarity about the threats posed by anti-democratic movements.
Unsurprisingly, the largest teachers’ organization in the state opposes the bill and has argued the standards are misguided. The Nebraska State Education Association’s president said, “These aren’t good standards. This isn’t the right way to teach history,” and warned the bill would infringe on local control by stepping on the toes of local school boards. Those objections echo a long-running tension between state-level curriculum mandates and educators who favor local decision-making on instructional content.
Supporters counter that local control has sometimes produced uneven results, with certain districts downplaying or reframing key episodes of 20th century history. From their perspective, statewide standards for this subject would create a baseline of knowledge that all students should have—especially knowledge about oppressive regimes that cost millions of lives. The test requirement is intended to convert that baseline into verifiable, classroom-level outcomes.
The debate over Bill 1024 cuts to the heart of competing visions for education: one side wants to prioritize civic competency, patriotic literacy, and explicit historical warnings about totalitarian systems; the other warns against top-down mandates that may politicize the classroom and narrow how history is taught. Whatever the vote, the proposal signals a continued Republican effort to influence what children learn about the 20th century and the ideological battles that shaped it.
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