How to teach American History, Huppenthal style

by David Safier

All the talk of Huppenthal’s accusing the MAS program of inaccuracies and distortions took me on a trip down memory lane, to August, 2010, when Huppenthal attended a Tucson forum for Ed Supe candidates.

I had my recorder with me, so my quotes are accurate. Huppenthal said this about his time in a Mexican American Studies classroom:

“My firsthand, classroom encounter clearly revealed an unbalanced, politicized and historically inaccurate view of American History being taught.”

Then, when he talked about how American History should be taught, he painted a wildly inaccurate whitewash of Ben Franklin’s relationship to slavery.

“Ben Franklin . . . was the president of the Abolitionist Society in Pennsylvania, he led the fight against the slave trade, successfully stopping the slave trade. He freed all of his own slaves, and not only freed them but gave them positions of responsibility so that they could grow into leaders.”

Let’s do a fact check of Huppenthal’s “unbalanced, politicized and historically inaccurate view” of Ben Franklin, a man I greatly admire, who was extremely complex, brilliant and flawed.

1. Franklin obviously did not successfully stop the slave trade. As president of the Abolitionist Society, he proposed getting rid of it.
2. Franklin did free his slaves, but it was long after he began his fight for abolition.
3. Franklin did not give his slaves “positions of responsibility so that they could grown into leaders,” so far as I can tell from what I have read. He believed freed slaves should be educated so they could advance in society, but I see no indication that he elevated his own freed slaves to “positions of responsibility.”

It’s frightening to think Huppenthal is in a position to be the arbiter of what is true and accurate in Arizona education.