One of the biggest problems with most states' U.S. history standards is their liberal bias. So found historians Sheldon and Jeremy Stern in their new Fordham study, The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011.
In 2003, at the time of the last Fordham review, many state U.S. history standards were plagued by overtly left-wing political tendentiousness and ideological indoctrination. There has been some retreat from such open bias since then. Nonetheless, more recent standards provide abundant evidence that political correctness remains alive in American classrooms. Lists of specific examples are routinely little more than diversity-driven checklists of historically marginalized groups. North Dakota, in one typical case, offers this slanted, chronologically muddled, and historically nonsensical selection of famous Americans in the early grades: ?George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, C?sar Ch?vez, [and] Sacagawea.?
Also widespread in state history standards is politically correct ?presentism??encouraging students to judge the past by present-day moral and political standards, rather than to comprehend past actions, decisions, and motives in the context of their times. Several states, for example, prod students to fault the revolutionary generation for denying full equality to women and blacks?without explaining that in the context of the late eighteenth century, the idea of government based even on the votes of white, property owning males was itself radical and untested.
So we sympathize with members of the Texas State Board of Education who wanted to ensure that such liberal bias did not creep into their new U.S. History standards when they were updated last year. But as the Sterns found, the Lone Star State went much too far in the other direction. As Sheldon Stern told the Houston Chronicle:
They are trying to resurrect the old triumphal narrative in which everything in American history is wonderful as opposed to the left-wing narrative in which America is uniquely evil. In the end, who suffers but students because they don't learn real history at all.
For instance (and this is from the Texas section of our report):
Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America's founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation between church and state is flatly dismissed. From the earliest grades, students are pressed to uncritically celebrate the ?free enterprise system and its benefits.? ?Minimal government intrusion? is hailed as key to the early nineteenth-century commercial boom?ignoring the critical role of the state and federal governments in internal improvements and economic expansion. Native peoples are missing until brief references to nineteenth-century events. Slavery, too, is largely missing. Sectionalism and states' rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories?the actual trigger for the sectional crisis?is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term ?Jim Crow? never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces.
(That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much, much more.)
Predictably, the conservative groups who were behind the new standards are up in arms, making claims both predictable (we mention slavery six times, we really do!) and humorous (Fordham has been "misrepresented" as a conservative organization because we receive funding from the "liberal" Gates Foundation!).
The good news is that it is possible to play it straight down the center when drafting history standards. In fact, another red-state, South Carolina, has done exactly that. Check out its excellent standards and their curriculum support documents for U.S. history (in grades 4 and 5, and in high school) to see that it can be done. As the Sterns point out in their review:
South Carolina's documents not only remain remarkably detailed and specific, but also repeatedly urge teachers and students to avoid simplistic clich?s. In discussing nineteenth-century industrial development, for example, the texts caution teachers ?to emphasize the role of government in providing the environment in which entrepreneurs could be successful. It is a common misunderstanding?that American individualism was sufficient to promote America's emergence as an industrial power in the late 19th century.? The texts are careful to note that it can be debated whether the often ruthless late nineteenth-century business leaders ?should be labeled robber barons or captains of industry,? and continue that ?it is important for students to understand that unfettered competition led to economic uncertainty and eventually to a public call for government regulation of industry.? After discussing the 1925 Scopes trial, the text calls attention to the debate, then and now, ?between social conservatives who advocate conformity to a traditional moral code and liberals who advocate individual rights,? stressing that ?students should understand the positions of both conservatives and liberals in the 1920s.?
Some conservatives like to claim that they are promoting a "just the facts" approach to U.S. history. That's true for South Carolina, but it's not all true for Texas.
?Mike Petrilli
