The Republican War on History and Civics Education Has to Stop

The disinformation phenomenon with members of the former Party of Lincoln that has exploded over the last four years did not start with Donald’s windmills cause cancer and let’s have patriotic education, Trump.

He, using the bully pulpit of the highest office of the land, just amplified the alternative facts the fringe right has been vomiting out for decades.

In that time both fringe Arizona and National Republicans have had this white nationalist and theocratic obsession with distorting both scientific and historical truth.

In Arizona, it was about omitting climate change, the theory of evolution, and the Big Bang Theory from the new science standards. The Superintendent of Public Instruction at the time, Diane Douglas, even brought in a creationist as a science curriculum consultant. Furthermore, before she left her position, she called on the State Board of Education to adopt the sectarian Hillsdale Curriculum standards in place of the Arizona ones.

Other right-wing fanatics have also scoffed at teaching a more in-depth version of United States History and Civics that would present a more thorough examination of the nation’s heroes and their impact (good and bad) on the country.

This movement, displayed whenever the College Board wants to revamp the American History standards, has crystallized further in Arizona over the last several months in local school board meetings in reaction to the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory.

People that oppose both the Project and Theory (like Donald Trump) seem to have a problem having children being told racism exists and horrible acts including slavery, internment camps, injustice, and murder were committed in this nation’s history to perpetuate its stench.

They instead would like a sanitized Birth of a Nation version of history and civics where the country was tamed by brave hardworking white men who created a paradise based on capitalism and good old fashioned Christian morality.

Little things like slavery, the wiping out of Native American populations, Immigration quotas to keep out Chinese, Italians, and Jews, the internment of the Japanese, and the Jim Crow system in the South, in this emerging white nationalist perspective, was just unfortunate events that children would be better not dwelling too much about because it will make them think.

Recent events in the Arizona budget process this last week have created a new opportunity for fringe lawmakers to create the civics and history curriculums in their own extremist right-wing alternative reality image.

In order to secure her vote on the budget, Republican leaders passed an amendment to the K-12 appropriations offered by Legislative District One State Representative Judy Burges which called for:

• American civics education AND A COMPARATIVE DISCUSSION OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES, SUCH AS COMMUNISM AND TOTALITARIANISM  THAT CONFLICT WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY ESSENTIAL TO THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF THE UNITED STATES.
• TO HELP FAMILIES, CIVIC INSTITUTIONS, LOCAL COMMUNITIES, SCHOOL DISTRICT GOVERNING BOARDS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS PREPARE STUDENTS TO BE CIVICALLY RESPONSIBLE AND KNOWLEDGEABLE ADULTS, THE STATE BOARD OF  EDUCATION SHALL WORK WITH THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND LEADERSHIP AT H.B. 2898 ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE CENTER FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA AND THE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR INSTITUTE TO:  DEVELOP CIVIC EDUCATION STANDARDS THAT SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS MUST INCLUDE PURSUANT TO SECTION 15-701.01. THE CIVIC EDUCATION STANDARDS MUST INCLUDE INSTRUCTION ON:
  THE ORIGINAL INTENT OF THE FOUNDING DOCUMENTS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE UNITED STATES AS FOUND IN SOURCE DOCUMENTS. THE CIVIC-MINDED EXPECTATIONS OF AN UPRIGHT AND DESIRABLE CITIZENRY THAT RECOGNIZES AND ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR PRESERVING AND DEFENDING THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY INHERITED FROM PRIOR GENERATIONS AND SECURED BY THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. CREATE AND MAINTAIN A LIST OF ORAL HISTORY RESOURCES TO BE USED ALONG WITH THE CIVIC EDUCATION STANDARDS THAT PROVIDE PORTRAITS IN PATRIOTISM BASED ON FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS OF VICTIMS OF OTHER NATIONS GOVERNING PHILOSOPHIES WHO CAN COMPARE THOSE PHILOSOPHIES WITH THOSE OF THE UNITED STATES.

It is obvious that Representative Burges has not recently read the Arizona Social Studies Standards in History and Civics. Please click here to read them. She probably has not read the standards that existed before the current ones either.

If she had, she would already know that much of what she already calls for in her amendment is already there in the standards and the social studies curriculum documents each local school board approves.

For example, what good history or government teacher would not use primary source documents to cover the origins of this nation’s political system. What school system has not set creating well informed, productive, and conscientious citizens of good character as one of its educational goals?

To assert that schools are not already doing that is ludicrous.

It would seem that Burges, like Diane Douglas before her, wants Arizona schools to have a history and civics curriculum that is biased and not created by mainstream instructors and historians.

Note she calls for “a comparative discussion of political ideologies such as communism and totalitarianism that conflict with the principles of freedom and Democracy.”

That is fine but what about the other totalitarian ideologies like Fascism, Authoritarianism, and even Trumpism.

Burges and her Republican big lie colleague Jake from Voter Fraud Troll Farm Hoffman has also called for audio histories of people fleeing communism to be shown to students.

What about the other repressive systems that are just as cruel and merciless as the Communist ones. Do they not count?

What about videos of people fleeing the Nazis during the Holocaust?

What about videos of Jewish physicists fleeing the Nazis and Fascists before World War Two?

What about the victims who survived Pinochet in Chile?

Or Apartheid in South Africa?

Or people who were forcibly sterilized in this country?

Or who had family members and friends lynched in the South?

Or people who felt victimized and singled out in Trumpism?

Burges would do well to rephrase the passage in that part of her amendment to include other forms of totalitarianism.

The LD One Representative should also leave the public school curriculum development to the public school advocates and specialists.

There is no business for the Freedom Schools financed by the Koch Brothers to craft Social Studies curriculums and standards for Arizona, or any other state, public educational institutions.

Actually, there is really no business for them to be at any University either. There are already departments on college campuses that do teach history and political science well in a mainstream focus compared to what the Freedom Schools provide from a more right-wing perspective.

School curriculums are best left to the state for standards development and local school boards to elaborate on and finalize as long as they are inclusive and do not ignore reality.

As current Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman tweeted after learning about the Burges Amendment and the wish to involve the Freedom Schools in Curriculum Development:

Curriculum decisions should be made at the local level, period. https://t.co/lwnJixoQDQ

— Kathy Hoffman (@Supt_Hoffman) June 25, 2021

The fate of the Burges Amendment is unclear right now because Republican State Senators Paul Boyer and T.J. Shope do not want the Koch Brothers Freedom Schools involved in public school curriculum writing either.

Hopefully, their opposition will hold.

The Republican War on History and Civics education by adopting a Totalitarian method of truth-telling has to stop.

For another perspective on this legislation, please click here to read AZ Blue Meanie’s article.