Observers of US history know that classrooms and schoolyards have long been battlegrounds. K-12 schools have been the backdrop for America's reckoning with everything from racial integration to public prayer, free speech to welfare programs, sports to critical race theory. In the White House's Executive Order "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" this tradition endures. Setting aside the E.O.'s statements on sex and gender, as a historian, its statements on history and the need for a "patriotic education" caught my attention. More than that, it set off serious alarm bells.
The E.O. articulates not only wanting to end what it calls "radical indoctrination" as it relates to race, but also the introduction of an alternative framework -- "patriotic education." According to the E.O., American history as taught in K-12 schools must feature:
(i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;Â
(ii) a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history...
(iv) the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.
Demanding any history teacher, any historian, tell such a version of US history is the educational equivalent of a Sisyphean task. To be clear, it is true that our Founding Fathers wrote a Declaration of Independence that states "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." However, we cannot claim that the government they then created actually recognized that equality, protected those rights of all, or granted liberty to everyone on its shores.
As the E.O. was released on the eve of Black History Month, I want to illustrate the dangerous impossibilities of such a "patriotic education" by spotlighting a few moments in US can history where an accurate account of the Black American experience is hardly worthy of celebration. To further drive home the contradiction in terms "patriotic education" demands, I will use examples that intersect with major conservative and/or MAGA talking points from the last election. Imagine what lesson plans you could craft that truthfully described each event and interpreted it as a step closer to America's principles worth admiring or celebrating...
Even within "Ending Radical Indoctrination" E.O. are echoes of conservative talking points denouncing surgical interventions on sexual and reproductive organs on those deemed legally unable to give consent (minors). MAGA devotees also have expressed outrage about government's role in science and health care vis-Ã -vis vaccine mandates, stem cell research, Planned Parenthood, etc. Should a teacher want to tout the US's significant contributions to scientific discovery, they are forced to grapple with shockingly dark histories. Yes, American doctor J. Marion Sims, for instance, has been called a "pioneer" in gynecology -- but he did so by conducting experimental surgeries on the reproductive organs of enslaved girls as young as 13. Jonas Salk's creation of the polio vaccine, meanwhile, occurred because of his use of cells from Henrietta Lack, a black woman, without her consent. For 40 years, the CDC, Department of Public Health, and scientists conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, to gain a complete understanding of the STI; however, in doing so, they intentionally selected only black men, and then deceived them and denied them life-saving treatment. How, in any of those moments, did America grow closer to its noble value of Life or Liberty?
Much has been made by MAGA about the "Culture Wars," the "War on Christianity," and the desire to restore America's traditional Christian values. Juxtapose this with critical moments in the history of Black Christians in America. Men claiming to be acting patriotically and in the name of preserving America detonated a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four Black girls attending church on Sunday. Roughly 50 years later, a man killed 9 people during Bible study, targeting the church and its congregants because they were Black. In fact, arson campaigns targeting Black churches specifically because they are Black have taken place across the US over the decades.
And what of all the instances when Black Christians have been denied the equity endowed by their Creator? With an American founder and theological roots born in the US, for instance, until 1978, the Mormon Church barred Black believers from the priesthood, temple endowments, and sealing ordinances, important components of the faith. Meanwhile, private Christian colleges refused to accept Black Americans well after public schools integrated, with Bob Jones University holding out until the 1970s and continuing a ban on interracial dating until 2000.
On this topic of interracial relationships, consider the lesson plan needed for teaching important Supreme Court decisions, which would surely include Loving v. Virginia. As the court case's name indicates, the state of Virginia fought to keep non-white Americans from marrying white Americans all the way to the Supreme Court, and that was in 1967. The case arose because Mildred Jeter -- a Black woman -- had legally married her childhood sweetheart, a white man, and wanted to raise a family with him. For this, she and her husband became convicted criminals. How did America move closer to allowing Black Americans the pursuit of happiness during all those moments when its elected officials fought to keep interracial marriage illegal?
Further, the President has also made a point, during his campaign and since, to discuss perceived bias in the legal system as evidenced by his arrest and convictions, as well as those he pardoned for their acts on 6 January. On this topic of facing prejudice under the law, how could a teacher be expected to devise lessons that tell an accurate, holistic narrative about America that makes it seem as though the country "has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history"? Did the US move closer to its founding principles when the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford definitively stated that Black people (born free or enslaved) could not be US citizens? More than a century later, when the state incarcerated Dr Martin Luther King and others preaching non-violent civil disobedience in pursuit of the right to vote, was the US materially closer to the principle of equal treatment under the law? How did police using dogs and fire hoses on Alabama high school protestors in 1963 move us closer to America's founding principles? Two years later, when police beat marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge for trying to register to vote, was that really a move "closer"? Would an onlooker observing Los Angeles police officers beat Rodney King during his arrest -- breaking his leg, cutting his face, beating him with billy clubs, using a stun gun -- really see an America progressing towards its noble principles?
The new Department of Defense head has pledged to advance recruitment and personnel decisions that emphasize combat preparedness, unit cohesion, and respects veterans. When teachers create lesson plans about World War II and the subsequent G.I. Bill, the bravery and service of the Tuskegee Airmen is worth highlighting. However, what "unifying" tone can be taken when the US military did not integrate until 1948, not a single Black serviceman received the Medal of Honor for their service in either World War until the 1990s, and the G.I. Bill's benefits were almost never available to black servicemen? Where was American greatness then?
In the "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" Executive Order, the administration calls for curricula that our should somehow avoid lessons that not only make students feel responsible for the acts of previous generations, but also those that make them "feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress" on such grounds. Obviously, a student should not be held responsible for the proverbial sins of the father. However, is it wrong to think that Americans should look back and feel distressed by the acts? To be empathetic is to feel anguish at the suffering so many Black Americans have faced on the basis of race. Acknowledging these parts of America's past is not what "sow[s] division," the acts themselves did. Finally, to be a patriot is to know and truly love one's country. Lying and overlooking all the times that America has failed its citizens and its democratic ideals, telling a whitewashed story of an imagined, idyllic past that did not exist for many Black Americans, does not make American patriots. It makes patriots to a country that did not exist, and prevents us from truly unifying all Americans in service of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.