If you are reading this, stop. Go instead to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/04/19/2021-08068/proposed-priorities-american-history-and-civics-education and read what the Biden Administration want to teach American schoolchildren: that the primary engine of their country is racism; that it is steeping in an inexpiable sludge of racial hatred; that woke-ness is the only acceptable response. The Left has finally dropped the mask; instead of quietly undermining the foundations of the Republic they have, under the cloak of “reform,” proceeded directly to open poisoning of the body politic through indoctrination masquerading as “education.”
Early Progressive and education reformer John Dewey – and others of his ilk at the turn of the twentieth century – wrought profound changes to education in America not only by advocating a project-based approach to learning, but also by insisting that a primordial purpose for education is to create good citizens who love their country and are engaged in its civic life. The Biden Administration’s current “Proposed Priorities in American History and Civics Education” are the antithesis of this.
These “Priorities” seem designed to promote hatred and division, based on the idea that in terms of relations among Americans of various races, nothing has changed since 1859, or before. This is so ahistorical as to appeal only to those who have become so alienated from reality that they wouldn’t recognize it if it walked up and smacked them across the face with mackerel.
The “system racism” and “anti-racism” rife throughout the Biden Administration’s proposals are poisonous byproducts of Marxian critical theory, and as such have absolutely no place in American education, save perhaps as an example of how devious some forms of hate-driven thinking can be. They are designed to teach young Americans that their country is uniquely evil and undeserving of any praise. Real historians who look at France of the 1920s and 30s know the ultimate result of that: social conflict, personal anomie, rejection of the nation and in the end, defeat and occupation. There is no reason to believe we are immune from the same result.
None of this is to say that we cannot, or should not, discuss the challenges and difficulties this country has had with race. But we should admit – and instruct – that if there was a John Rutledge, so there was a Benjamin Franklin; that Franklin Roosevelt had his Gordon Hirabayashi and Joe Biden his Clarence Thomas. The actual history of race in this country is that of an enlarging boundary of acceptance – however painful it might appear to an idealist unfamiliar with experiences not their own.
So not only no, but “Hell, no” to this reeking pile of compost.
If you agree, go to the Federal Register’s “Comments” page and say so. You’ll find it at: “https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/04/19/2021-08068/proposed-priorities-american-history-and-civics-education#open-comment”. The deadline for comment is May 19, so be prompt. This madness has to stop.
