Washington D.C., Sept. 17, 2020
I am deeply honored to be here and participate at this White House Conference on U.S. history in the presence of our Founding Documents. Today is Constitution Day. It is also Citizenship Day, on which we honor all those who have attained American citizenship. Therefore, I will take a moment to acknowledge and thank two brave subjects of the East Bloc Communist regime of Romania — my parents — who left all that they knew to take their two young sons, myself and my brother at the age of 6, and legally emigrated to the United States. We all eventually became grateful, naturalized United States citizens. Immigrants who come to America from such places do not take this remarkable country for granted. We know it has flaws — every country does. Yet we appreciate America and love it for its freedom, opportunity and rule of law, its never-ending efforts to address problems and injustices, and the traditions and fundamental human decency of its people that make it all possible.
The history we teach our children cannot solve all of our problems, nor should we expect it to. But it can provide a factual foundation for discussing current challenges and seeking solutions while educating a new generation about America’s remarkable heritage and what brings us together as one people. Unfortunately, all too often, that is not the type of history we are providing our students.
Others on this panel are discussing the deeply divisive misrepresentations of the 1619 Project, whose author has suggested that accuracy was not her priority, and of Howard Zinn’s textbook A People’s History of the United States. Instead, I will address materials used in schools that have not formally adopted 1619 or Zinn’s textbook, often assuming that more mainstream instructional materials are safe and not prone to such problems.
In high school U.S. history, the most widely perceived “gold standard” is the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History course. Though it is college-level, it often influences even non-AP U.S. history courses at the high school and even middle school levels. The APUSH course framework presents a distorted picture of U.S. history that is in some ways more dangerous due to its subtlety than the 1619 initiative. The casual reviewer is unlikely to notice what is NOT present, or patterns that only become clear when one analyzes the document as a whole.
For example, the main APUSH course framework (Fall 2020) refers to property 5 times, of which 4 are in the negative context of restricting the right to vote based on property requirements. The only reference to legal protections for property rights, a more positive context, refers to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — a relatively obscure reference to most people — which addressed the admission of new states. Nothing is included on Constitutional protections for fundamental property rights, such as the prohibition on government taking a person’s property without just compensation (Takings Clause) or protections for inventions or other intellectual property (Patent and Copyright Clause). Stepping back and considering our current social context, if property is presented mostly as an example of historical injustice, what does this indicate to students about the need to respect the private property of others? It is a fairly safe assumption that those who we’ve seen looting, destroying and burning in 2020 have certainly not been convinced — more likely, never even been exposed — to the notion that such rights can protect the property of the weak from the depredations of the powerful. In fact, such rights can stand as bulwark against the injustice of “might makes right.”
In the case of religion, with few exceptions, the references in the APUSH framework are vague formulations about “divergent” views or “new” beliefs. While the Bible and Judaism are not mentioned at all, the few specific references to Christianity or Christians are mostly negative. For example, desire to spread the Christian faith is identified as a motivation for the conquest of the New World. Similarly, Christian efforts to convert native peoples are placed in the context of colonizing and exploiting native populations and Africans. But no mention is made of Christianity’s history as a driving motivation behind the Abolitionist Movement to end slavery, in support of charitable social activity, or as the backbone of the civil rights movement to end Jim Crow.
There is also no mention in the framework of the common use of Biblical quotations and beliefs in political pamphlets during the American Revolutionary period. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine quotes extensively from the Hebrew Scriptures to argue against monarchical government. First, he compares the pastoral virtue of the lives of the Patriarchs with the troubled tenures of many Israelite kings. He follows by discussing the prophet Samuel’s bitter disappointment when the Israelites requested a king to rule over them so that they might be more like neighboring nations, which he considered a rejection of God’s sovereignty. Paine’s reliance on Scripture indicates the potential of Biblical faith to inspire Americans to seek a free and just form of government.
In the APUSH framework, the Constitutional Convention is framed through the lens (“thematic focus”) of an event fostered by “social and political groups”. While that was certainly a critical element, it leaves out the impact of brilliant individual Founders — great men who could sometimes rise above merely representing the interests of different factions. For example, George Washington presiding over the Convention was not seen at the time merely as a delegate from the state of Virginia, but as a deeply respected leader with a vision of greater national unity. Multiple topics were debated at the Convention that were incorporated into the final document, yet the only substantive historical developments specified in the framework as required course content are compromises over the representation of slave states in Congress and the role of the federal government in regulating slavery and the slave trade. The entire topic of the Constitution itself is covered in half of a page. The required course content is captured by a single-sentence description of the historical developments represented by the Constitution. Other topics receive more extensive and specific coverage than the Constitution.
AAT, a nonprofit organization, is committed to developing instructional materials for American history at the high school level that are accurate and tell the whole story. That includes addressing America’s faults, including the blight of slavery and its repercussions, but also its remarkable accomplishments. We have partnered with nationally-recognized historian Wilfred McClay, who has authored an absolutely outstanding, readable and overall positive U.S. history textbook — Land of Hope — that we believe is the best available. We will work with him, along with several other excellent historians and educators we’ve identified, to develop instructional units that provide teachers with detailed instructional support on assignments, assessments, handling diverse student skill levels and everything else they might need. The units will include a strong emphasis on students engaging with core original documents, including the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, to develop a basic mastery. Students will learn to analyze, discuss, and write short and longer historical analyses and papers.
We believe that many parents, educators, and other interested citizens share our concern about the quality of much of history education and want something better. Our curriculum has the potential to be adopted in many schools across the nation. Even where it is not adopted, it will put pressure on publishers to offer a more complete American history. We appreciate the limited grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that allows us to begin writing a curriculum. We invite you to learn more about our work to complete a full curriculum at www.aateducation.org.