Tag: American history education

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Attack on American History

The Biden Administration’s disbanding of the 1776 Commission, and the removal of its report from the White House website, is the latest assault on teaching the essential attributes and history of the nation to our youth.

The Commission was founded “with the intention of cultivating a better education among Americans in the principles and history of our nation and in the hope that a rediscovery of those principles and the forms of constitutional government will lead to a more perfect Union.”

Basic American principles, such as respect for free speech and the concept of Americans as one people, (as opposed to a nation of warring ethnic and interest groups) have come under an unprecedented attack due to an educational system overinfluenced both by domestic Marxists and foreign enemies.

Eagle Forum reports that: “The most widely used history textbook in U.S. public schools is A People’s History of the United States by the late Howard Zinn. It has sold a million and a half copies since it was published in 1980. It is required reading in many high schools and colleges…This history textbook by Howard Zinn is a very leftwing version of U.S. history, full of … propaganda. It is based on the thesis that America is not a republic but an empire controlled by a few white men. Its heroes are anti-establishment protestors…”

As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government previously reported, Walter Williams provided a disturbing report from the University of Hawaii:

“’We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.’ That’s taught to University of Hawaii students by Professor Haunani-Kay Trask. Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton University and the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Palestine monitor, believes that President George W. Bush ordered the destruction of the twin towers.’ … Then there’s Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman, who explained our national problems by saying, ‘But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.’”

When U.S. history is taught, even on the lower school level, it is frequently from an extreme anti-American bias. The Federalist reported that in 2014, when award-winning history professor Larry Krieger reviewed Common Core’s AP American history curriculum, he was appalled.  “Krieger… conducted a meticulous dissection of the anti-American themes and anti-knowledge gaps in the extensive new curriculum framework. These include emphasizing exploitation, racial conflict, and economic determinism, and omitting the Pilgrims, all Revolutionary War battles, Alexis de Tocqueville, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and much more. Their analysis and Wood’s also make it quite clear that the new curriculum is nowhere near objective, or even even-handed, philosophically, and is, moreover, organizationally incoherent.”

In addition, foreign adversaries have gained a major foothold in many universities.

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One example:  A 2019 Senate Report found that From January 2012 to June 2018, 15 U.S. schools reported receiving $15,472,725 directly from Hanban, a propaganda arm of the Chinese government. To get a more comprehensive understanding of Hanban’s spending in the United States, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations requested financial records from 100 U.S. schools and found Hanban directly contributed $113,428,509 to U.S schools—more than seven times the amount U.S. schools actually reported. Nearly 70% of U.S. schools that received more than $250,000 from Hanban failed to properly report that information to the Department of Education.

 As a result, there has been a decline of education in the history of the United States.

According to the Nations Report Card.Gov Proficiency in US history among America’s eighth graders is a dismal 18%. Civics knowledge is a horrendous 23%.  Geography is not far behind at 27%.

A study by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation  revealed that its survey of 41,000 Americans found that only 27 percent of those under the age of 45 nationally were able to demonstrate a basic understanding of American history. Nationally, only four in 10 Americans passed a basic exam on the topic. According to the organizations’ president, Arthur Levine, “Unfortunately, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation has validated what studies have shown for a century: Americans don’t possess the history knowledge they need to be informed and engaged citizens.” 

It’s not just ignorance of the facts as a whole.  There is disturbing evidence that outright lies defaming America are being taught in our schools.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Lynn Cheney described a New Advanced Placement History Exam that describes President Reagan’s “tear Down that wall” speech, in which he urged the Soviet Union to remove the Berlin Wall, as evidence of “increased assertiveness and bellicosity” on the part of the US.

Illustration: Smithsonian Museum of American History

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Erasing American History

Earlier this summer, Americans celebrated Independence Day.  If current educational trends continue, few of the current generation in American schools may understand the significance of the date.

The lack of knowledge in U.S. History has become so dire that even once-popular tourist sites based on America’s heritage are becoming imperiled. In an open letter issued in June, Mitchel B. Reiss, President of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, (a major site offering a recreated colonial-era village) sadly noted that “For a variety of reasons – [including] less American history being taught in schools, changing times and tastes that cause us to attract half the visitors we did 30 years ago – the Foundation loses significant amounts of money every year.”

Earlier this year, the New York Post’s Karol Markowicz  wrote that  “Don’t know much about history . . .,’ goes the famous song. It’s an apt motto for the Common Core’s elementary school curriculum…A 2012 story in Perspectives on History magazine by University of North Carolina professor Bruce Van Sledright found that 88 percent of elementary school teachers considered teaching history a low priority… Van Sledright also found that teachers just didn’t know enough history to teach it. He wrote there was some ‘holiday curriculum as history instruction,’ but that was it.”

Last year, a Blaze report noted, George Washington University decided that even history majors did not have to take any courses in American History.

In 2015, ABC’s KSFY affiliate reported that “the South Dakota Board of Education approved new guidelines that do not require high schools to teach U.S. history.”

A Nations Report Card  study found that only 18% of eighth grade students are proficient in U.S. history.  Similarly, a worrisome 2014 survey of 1,416 adults recently conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy  Center  found that:

  • While little more than a third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, just as many (35 percent) could not name a single one;
  • Just over a quarter of Americans (27 percent) know it takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to override a presidential veto; and
  • One in five Americans (21 percent) incorrectly thinks that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision is sent back to Congress for reconsideration.

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Also in 2014, Capitol Times.com quotes a statement by Arizona state legislator Steve Montenegro, a Republican, that “Civics and Social Studies and History are being boxed out of the classroom.”  He notes that “96% of a sample group of high schoolers in Arizona and Oklahoma failed to pass a basic test on citizenship issues.”

In a commentary, William J. Dodwell provides his analysis for the growing exclusion of U.S. history:

“Academia has long been a bastion of the political left…The origin of the malaise derives from the ideological and administrative politicization of public education.  Liberal elected officials and like-minded school administrators embrace identity politics and other forms of political correctness that alter academic content and teaching modalities.  At the college level, professors also promote the progressive agenda… In the primary and secondary schools, teachers might not be as ideologically motivated but are controlled by their left-leaning administrative authorities, that is, superintendents and principals… The radical departure from traditional curricula and academic standards linked to the institution of political correctness in the schools and colleges raises serious questions as to educational purpose. Has the left deliberately diluted education in its self-interest… Education authorities have curtailed or eliminated the teaching of civics and American history such that many children do not even know who George Washington was.  Daniel Henninger writes in The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2015, about the College Board’s revision of the Advance Placement examination for U.S. history.  The changes recast the subject in a framework of ‘different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial and ethnic identities…”

America’s heritage and national character are being removed by the nation’s educational hierarchy. It is a challenge to the very existence of the character of the nation.  It is a crisis of extraordinary importance, and must be remedied without delay. Parents must review the curriculum in the schools their children attend, and force changes where needed.