American history education

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

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.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.