School censorship is not democratic. Speaking up is the solution.

In 2015, I went to China to teach a course about schools and history. The first thing I learned was that the schools didn’t really teach history — at least not the way I understood it.

They taught a sanitized, state-approved version, purged of anything remotely critical or controversial. Most textbooks downplayed or simply omitted the Great Leap Forward — Mao Zedong’s attempt to fast-track communism that instead caused millions to die of starvation — and the Cultural Revolution, which displaced millions of others to forced labor camps in the countryside. And nobody spoke of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, where soldiers gunned down student protesters.

In China, when I asked a prominent professor about these topics, he told me they were “sensitive” — meaning, people kept quiet about them. But surely all nations suppress or discourage information that makes them look bad, he added. Did schools in my country address African American slavery, he asked, or the genocide of Native Americans?

Yes, I replied. And not always, I admitted, or with less depth than we should. But we discussed them. The mark of a democracy is its ability to critique itself, I said. And that requires us to explore the dark and sad parts of our past, not just the bright and happy ones.

The mark of a democracy is its ability to critique itself.

I still believe that, of course. But if I was asked the same question about America today, I’d give a very different answer.

Across the country, our elected officials are trying to suppress history. And that reminds us that democracies can censor themselves every bit as much as autocracies can.

Witness the flurry of new state bills, all designed to restrict what schools can teach about America. Dozens of legislatures have introduced legislation to prohibit instruction on “divisive” concepts, especially racism and sexism. Echoing Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, other states have tried to bar discussions of gender identity. Even if some of these bills don’t pass, they have created a chilling effect on classrooms across the country.

None of these measures was imposed by a dictatorial regime, as in China. They were pressed by citizen groups like Moms for Liberty and signed into law by politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. They are democratic attacks on democratic education.

They are also not unique to America.

In India, Hindu lawmakers and educators aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi have purged textbook information deemed too friendly to Muslims. Filipino leader Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has called for the removal of material about human rights violations by his father, who preceded him as president. And under the rule of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian schools minimized the country’s history of slavery and tempered criticism of its 1964 military coup.

That’s ironic because Bolsonaro — like Modi and Marcos — rose to power via the ballot box, not the gun. (Bolsonaro lost power the same way, when he was defeated seeking reelection.) A popular movement in Brazil called Escola sem Partido — meaning “schools without politics” — has campaigned for measures that would encourage students to film their teachers, provide a hotline for parents to complain about “cultural Marxism” in the schools, and reduce the time classrooms devote to Black and Native history.

All of that follows the same playbook as conservative organizations in the United States, which have framed our schools as captives of a “woke mob” that is menacing democracy. In fact, these groups are suppressing the critical discussion that democracy demands. But they will continue to win the day until other people step up to challenge them.

» READ MORE: Want to save our democracy? Talk — and listen — to someone you don’t agree with. | Jonathan Zimmerman

Thankfully, some of that is already happening. Around the country, groups like Red Wine and Blue (that’s really its name) have challenged school board candidates sponsored by Moms for Liberty. Most of all, it has rallied parents to support history — and to fight censorship — in our schools.

That’s the democratic way. The wrong answer to right-wing pressure groups is to tell them to butt out of school politics, which is what Terry McAuliffe said during his failed gubernatorial bid in Virginia. The correct answer — indeed, the only answer — is for other citizens to butt in.

We don’t live in China, which is now squashing history in Hong Kong schools. Nor do we live in Russia, where textbooks have purged references to Kyiv and Ukraine. We live in a democracy. The big question is whether we will raise our voices loudly enough to defend it.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools,” which was published in a revised 20th-anniversary edition last fall by the University of Chicago Press.