Trump's Threat to Pull Funding From Schools Over How They Teach Slavery Is Part of a Long History of

[JonLP24]

Trump's Threat to Pull Funding From Schools Over How They Teach Slavery Is Part of a Long History of Politicizing American History Class

With the nation divided along political lines, amid ever-mounting suspicion of supposed outside influences undermining American security, a group of powerful people decided to go right to the root of what they saw as the problem: American students, they believed, were being taught a skewed version of their own history that was designed to weaken patriotism. To stop the corrosion, someone would have to intervene.

This scenario may sound familiar, but it didn’t take place just last week, when President Trump threatened the funding of California schools that teach the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which reframes the country’s origins around the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia. (Material from the project has been used to supplement curricula in schools nationwide, though the extent of its implementation in California is not clear.)

But in fact, that scenario could have taken place in the aftermath of the Civil War. Or in 1917. Or in 1948.

So it’s no surprise that historians’ collective reaction to Trump’s tweet—and a similar sentiment expressed earlier this summer by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s introduction of the Saving American History Act of 2020—was one of déjà vu. The teaching of U.S. History in public schools has always been political, and such concerns about whether curricula are “anti-American” are par for the course in moments of turmoil.

https://time.com/5889051/history-curriculum-politics/?amp=true

[TruckFump]

1. I was talking to a friend today about US History when I was in school.

I am 72 years old, female, white and raised in the mid-West until my high school years when my family moved to California. I cannot remember an in-depth history lesson in elementary and/or high school that said anything much beyond comments on the Missouri compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, and battles of the civil war. The issue of slavery? Very silent during the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, more like TOTALLY silent on the subject.

IMO, it should be taught. We were -- before tRump -- a great nation with great principles in general. But...this nation is NOT perfect and never has been. We need to stop hiding the truth. And the fucking Confederate flag is evil. It stands for hatred, abuse, misuse and the ownership of people as tho a property right. The 1619 Project IMO is a good idea.