Suggestions for President Trump’s Patriotic History Commission
Who anticipated that historians and social studies teachers would be at the center of three of the greatest political storms in the history of the United States – all at the same time? Social studies teachers are grappling with how to teach about the Presidential election and the outcome, without appearing to be biased. Sometimes it seems that we are the only people in the United States who are not allowed to have an opinion.
With the release of the 1619 Project by the New York Times and the near hysterical response, social studies teachers are part of the debate over whether United States history begins with slavery in colonial Virginia, in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or with some other event.
President Trump’s response to the 1619 Project was the establishment of a 1776 Commission and a call for “patriotic history.” Given his, and his followers, refusal to accept the result of the 2020 Presidential election, this country could probably use a little “patriotic history,” but I doubt if we can agree on what it should include. Historians are a contentious bunch.
These are my suggestions for President Trump’s 1776 Commission. I propose organizing the entire United States history curriculum from elementary school through high school with students examining whether the United States has achieved the promises laid-out in two of the nation’s founding documents, the Preambles to the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Of course it will be taught differently on different grades levels. Younger students can examine whether the things done by the United States to enslaved Africans, Native Americans, immigrants, and working people were “fair”?
“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.” – Declaration of Independence (1776)
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” – Preamble to the United States Constitution (1787)
In hearings for Trump Supreme Court nominees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative judges placed a great premium on textual analysis. Critical analysis of primary source documents is an essential feature of state and national history standards and the Common Core, so I thought middle and high school students and teachers should start by analyzing the “text”.