The Right's Goal of Rewriting and Sanitizing America'sHistory

The far right, which encompasses Christofascists and white supremacists - i.e., a significant portion of the base of today's GOP - and various anti-public education zealot,s seeks to rewrite American history to erase all ugly elements of America's history and eliminate any references to social justice as well as the brutality that was (and often still is) visited on minorities.  Indeed, it might be called an American version of Vladimir Putin's rewriting of Russian history to delete the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution and the horrors of Stalin and communism and fan Russian xenophobia and exhalt Russia's imperial past.  The effort also seeks to cement the myth that the nation was founded as a "Christian nation" and promote a right wing version of Christianity.  Of course, that version of Christianity opposes any mention of social justice issues that are throughout the New Testament which are treated instead as an effort to undermine America and and ferment shame over what whites did to others over the course of the nation's history.  A piece in Salon looks at this dangerous effort which is now in full swing in states like Florida and Texas and which some fear Glenn Youngkin may yet try to bring to Virginia.  Here are article excerpts:

In late June, a conservative education coalition called the Civics Alliance released a new set of social studies standards for K-12 schools, with the intention of promoting it as a model for states nationwide. These standards, entitled "American Birthright," are framed as yet another corrective to supposedly "woke" public schools, where, according to Republicans, theoretical frameworks like critical race theory are only one part of a larger attack on the foundations of American democracy. 

"Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of America's history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country," reads the introduction to "American Birthright." (The "birthright" here refers to "freedom.") And the fields of history and civics, it suggests, exemplify the worst of that trend.

While it claims to represent an ideologically neutral, apolitical history, the document holds that most instruction that references "diversity, equity and inclusion" or "social justice" amounts to "vocational training in progressive activism" and "actively promote[s] disaffection from our country." It heralds Ronald Reagan as a "hero of liberty" alongside Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Its proposed lessons in contemporary U.S. history include Reagan's revitalization of the conservative movement, Bill Clinton's impeachment, "Executive amnesties for illegal aliens" and the "George Floyd Riots."  

American Birthright is just one of numerous recent right-wing efforts to overhaul public K-12 curricula to align with the dictates of current conservative ideology. 

Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Florida's Department of Education has begun holding three-day training sessions for public school teachers around the state to prepare them to implement the state's new Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, Gov. Ron DeSantis' flagship effort to create a more "patriotic" civics curriculum.

As the Herald reported, a number of teachers who attended the first training, in Broward County, emerged with deep concerns. Some said the new civics standards appeared to promote "a very strong Christian fundamentalist way" of analyzing U.S. history. Others recounted that trainers had claimed that America's founding fathers opposed strict separation of church and state, had compared the end of school-sponsored prayer to segregation and had downplayed the history of American slavery in misleading ways.

Also last week, the Texas Tribune reported that a group of advisers to the state's education board — which is adapting its own social studies standards after Texas' legislature banned teaching about racism or slavery in ways that make students "feel discomfort" — had proposed that second-grade teachers call slavery "involuntary relocation." (After a board member objected, the board voted to "revisit" that language.) 

But even in this climate, "American Birthright" seeks to distinguish itself through the scope of its ambitions. The document is not a curriculum but rather a model set of social studies standards, of the sort that state-level education departments adopt in order to guide and regulate individual school districts as they craft their own curricula. 

That's by design. Civics Alliance describes its mission as "preserving and improving America's civics education and preventing the subordination of civics education to political recruitment tools," namely by writing model bills and social studies standards that lawmakers and activists can use to influence the curricula schools and school districts create. 

As the document explains, "We chose this form because state standards are the single most influential documents in America's education administrations." Not only do such standards have significant impact on public school curricula, they also affect those of AP courses, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and textbooks used across the country.

The Civics Alliance was created in 2021 as an offshoot of another entity, the National Association of Scholars, a conservative nonprofit aimed at reforming higher education which features right-wing leaders like Ginni Thomas (the suddenly-famous spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) on its board. NAS launched Civics Alliance after Joe Biden closed down the 1776 Commission — Donald Trump's answer to the "1619 Project" — on his first day in office.

The list of groups and individuals involved in the creation of "American Birthright" reads like a who's-who of U.S. right-wing policy advocacy, including think tanks like the Claremont Institute, the Family Research Council and the creationist Discovery Institute, and influential state groups such as Arizona's Goldwater Institute and Massachusetts' Pioneer Institute. The document gives prominent credit to Florida's Department of Education, and its 2021 revised civics standards, and lists a department official among its expert consultants. 

Sarah Shear, a professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell and coauthor of two national studies assessing state K-12 standards on U.S. history, civics and government . . . .  [noted] "I often hear from people that telling the truth threatens the pretty story of the country we live in," she continued. "But not telling the truth has harmed everyone, because it has not provided the capacity by which we could address the problems we still have." 

Martell [a social studies education professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston] said he was particularly concerned about "a clear undertone" in American Birthright suggesting "that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on Christian values and beliefs," exemplified by passages calling for curricula to emphasize "the role of faith in sustaining and extending liberty" and describing America's founding principles as "rooted in Christian thought." 

While "American Birthright" presents Western civilization as a rich intellectual legacy that includes the creation of science and democracy, the non-European world is largely covered as the study of "migrations, clashes, massacres [and] conquests" undertaken by "small-scale tribes, nomadic societies, and villages that preceded civilization, whose warlike nature must be understood in order to comprehend the character and the magnitude of the civilizing process." 

The standards also suggest that 19th-century European imperialism should be taught as a boon to colonized people, accounting for "Improved life expectancy and growing populations among colonized peoples" as well as the "Abolitions of slavery." 

There is much more.  Read the whole piece and, if you have a strong stomach, read the "American Birthright" standards.  The goal is to take us back to the 1950's or earlier.