1776 commission

Is Moms For Liberty Out to Protect Kids or Scare Parents?

Williamson County in suburban Nashville shows how the astroturf Mom's group erupted on the scene to challenge a popular and well-regarded social studies curriculum for elementary schools on the grounds that its civil rights lessons were "divisive." 

How a Conservative Christian College is Leading the Fight Against Public Education

by Kathryn Joyce

Hillsdale College is building a national network of conservative education activists with the goals of establishing charter schools based around the school's politically conservative curriculum. 

On the Mythologizing of United States History

by Matthew Teutsch

"I am a native Louisianian, and I am white. I never learned about the racial violence and voter suppression that occurred during and after Reconstruction, nor did I learn about the massacres that continue to influence the present." 

Daryl Michael Scott: ‘Bad History and Worse Social Science Have Replaced Truth’

"If I thought that lies would set you free, maybe I would go along with lies. But I believe that you’re not going to lie your way out of it; you’re going to think your way out of it."

Making Revisionism Great Again: The Trouble With Trump’s Rewriting Of American History

by James W. Loewen

The 1776 commission quotes Frederick Douglass for its own peculiar purposes, so I shall end by quoting him for mine. “He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”

Every Curriculum is Ideological

by Peter Smagorinsky

"Every curriculum is ideological. And simply through its selection of materials, subjects, and perspectives, every curriculum is doctrinaire. If conservative thought is designed to promote stability, then it also supports the perpetuation of existing inequities. That sounds political and ideological to me."

Editorial: Leave History to the Historians

An Iowa editorial board says that the flaws of the 1619 Project are nothing in comparison to the efforts of state legislators to interfere in the content of history education. 

Trump’s 1776 Commission and the San Francisco Board of Education Have a Lot in Common

by Max Boot

"It is no surprise that the 1776 Commission did not include a single expert on U.S. history and that the San Francisco school board also refused to consult historians."

Serious Historians are Criticizing Trump’s 1776 Report. It’s How Most U.S. History is Already Taught

by Matthew Nelsen

Political scientist Matthew Nelsen argues that the proponents of the 1776 Commission's "patriotic" history are defending an outdated curriculum against well-founded challenges, not protecting real history from trendy cultural politics. 

The 1776 Follies

by Michael Kazin

"At its core, the 1776 report reveals a profound ignorance about what professional historians of the United States actually think and do."

The 1776 Presidential Commissioners Forgot That Dissent is as American as Hero Worship

by David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler

After insisting that educators avoid “political agendas,” the 1776 Commission Report authors simply assume that their simplistic hero-worship version of history is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.”

“Many Students Are Now Taught in School to Hate Their Own Country”

by Jonathan Wilson

The biggest problem with the "1776 Commission" report is its broad and unfounded assumptions about how students actually respond to history classes. The report never asks if students might love America more because it has moved on from the 18th century, because its purpose is ideological grievance, not effective teaching. 

The Origins of Trump’s Slapdash, Last-Second ‘1776 Report’

by Joshua Tait

Putting the "1776 Commission" report into context requires understanding that it's not just a "conservative" project, but a product of a movement to define the United States as the realization of classical and Biblical civilization imperiled by relativism and multiculturalism. 

Against the Consensus Approach to History

by William Hogeland

Current debates about the historiography of slavery and the founding mistake the authority claimed by past generations of historians for scholarly integrity instead of recognizing that writing history has always been a political act (that often works to conceal its politics).

The Sheer Absurdity of Trump’s “1776 Commission” Report Is Hard to Overstate

by Timothy Messer-Kruse

"If American education was organized according to its blueprint it would look strikingly like the schoolrooms common in 1776, complete with rulers used primarily to rap the knuckles of students who answered their questions the wrong way."

Making Revisionism Great Again: The Trouble with Trump’s Rewriting of American History

by James Loewen

"We already have the education that the commission recommends. Our textbooks are nationalist and ethnocentric, rather than critical. That’s why we’re in trouble."

Biden Revokes Trump Report Promoting "Patriotic Education"

"In documents announcing Biden’s executive order, administration officials said the panel sought to erase America’s history of racial injustice'."

AHA Condemns Report of Advisory 1776 Commission

“Written hastily in one month after two desultory and tendentious ‘hearings,’” the AHA writes, “without any consultation with professional historians of the United States, the report fails to engage a rich and vibrant body of scholarship that has evolved over the last seven decades."

A Push for ‘Patriotic Education’

David Blight and Lindsay Stallones Marshall argue that the report's purpose is purely political and will result in further degradation of the public capacity to judge facts and evidence. 

The Ideas Behind Trump’s 1776 Commission Report

Nicole Hemmer, David Blight, Geoffrey Kabaservice, and Adam Laats place the 1776 Commission report in the context of longstanding political and cultural battles over historical narrative.