Free Republic

In the 1990s, when I was in graduate school and reading required postmodern/Marxist theory, including Critical Race Theory, I little imagined that twenty-some years later, irate parents at school board meetings would be denouncing its use in elementary school classrooms and organizing recall elections. This is for the good. CRT is dividing Americans and actually harming blacks—and whites. What I as an adult graduate student found tedious and abstractly wrong-headed is now boiled down for K-12. It tells students that what their eyes and ears tell them is wrong: all white people are privileged oppressors. To accomplish this, it reaches...

When standardized tests take up the latest political fad, the credibility of the test suffers, doing a disservice to those who desire a true education.Across America, it’s becoming increasingly common for school districts to advance alternative versions of American history that focus almost exclusively on the nation’s faults rather than its exceptionalism. Even elite preparatory academies like Manhattan’s Brearley and Dalton schools are instituting “critical race theory” curricula that define people by race rather than character. At the same time, schools have forgone the study of great authors like Homer, Horace, Dante Alighieri, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky — luminaries whose ideas...

The College Board is a not-for-profit company that has a great deal of influence over American education. Its Scholastic Aptitude Test (the SAT) is the most widely used test for assessing the college readiness of students, and its many Advanced Placement exams allow students to show that they have learned subjects well enough not to have to take introductory college courses. Predictably, the Board has succumbed to the general trend toward “political correctness,” or to use the word currently in fashion, “wokeness.” That is to say, the Board has revised its materials to fit in with leftist beliefs. That is...

President Trump and his allies are launching a counterstrike in the war on our nation’s founding. Since The American Mind began nearly two years ago, we have consistently warned of the regime-level crisis caused by the corruption of the content of American education. The recent riots and the ongoing cultural revolution fomented by identity politics has helped prove our point. It is now clearer to Americans that if we do not change course, decades of anti-American propaganda and identitarian teaching in our schools will result in a fundamental overthrow of our system of government. Just two weeks ago the Trump...

Mary Grabar's book, 'Debunking Howard Zinn,' takes aim at the celebrated historian who is as influential as he is ideological and dishonest. Howard Zinn’s book, The People’s History of the United States, is one of the most famous American history textbooks ever written. His goal was to change the way Americans saw their own history by writing from the perspective of those he called “underdogs.” In doing so, he thoroughly distorts the true historical record and paints America as an inherently unjust nation.Mary Grabar believes that at the root of his agenda is a desire to see America turned into...

For nearly 40 years, American students have been taught about their country’s history with communist disinformation by a historian who was a onetime Communist Party U.S.A. member and a lifelong promoter of communism. This is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which has sold over 2.6 million copies since its publication in 1980. It is the textbook of choice for Advanced Placement U.S. history courses in high schools, is used in college history and education courses, is packaged into free, downloadable lessons for K-12 teachers by the Zinn Education Project, is quoted extensively in school books, and...

We’ve all heard about the impact of “fake news,” but there’s something even more dangerous: teaching “fake history.” “If you think that it is outrageous that Democratic presidential candidates want to eliminate the southern border and that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls our detention facilities there ‘concentration camps,’ then you haven’t been reading and believing Howard Zinn’s best-selling ‘A People’s History of the United States,’” writes Mary Grabar, Ph.D. First published in 1980, “A People’s History” has sold more than 2.5 million copies and is in virtually every school district, university and local library. Zinn (1922-2010) chaired the history and social...

This appears to be a forthcoming 2019 edition of an existing textbook from the global education publishing giant Pearson, whose materials are ubiquitous. The friend highlighted some sections that show clear bias against political conservatives, President Trump and his administration, and Americans of faith. Here are some transcriptions from those images. In describing the rise of Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting: “The nearly all-white police force was seen as an occupying army in the mostly African-American town.” In a section discussing President Trump’s cabinet, the book says “They were largely white males, more so...

I have written repeatedly about the hard-left bias in the teaching of AP American History. I finally got tired of writing such posts and abandoned the beat. But now, I learn that, beginning in 2020, many Advanced Placement students will be using an American History textbook that suggests President Trump is mentally ill and that depicts him and many of his supporters as racists. The book asserts that “[Trump’s] not very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” What connected with a significant number of primary voters was Trump’s strong opposition to illegal immigration and his concern over...

A new Advanced Placement American history textbook is raising red flags because of its anti-Trump language and its suggestion that Trump supporters are racist. By the People: A History of the United States is the newest edition of a Pearson Education history book that could be made available to high school students if school districts opt to use it. The book has not yet been distributed to students but has been introduced to teachers to see if they would want to use it as part of their curriculum in the next couple of years. Tarra Snyder, a student at Rosemount...

From the very beginning, it’s clear that Wilfred M. McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story isn’t a typical textbook. The title alone alerts readers that McClay’s book will not be the kind of history text that has become so popular in today’s high school and college courses—a diatribe against America’s many sins. Instead, it is an accurate, but loving, story of our country and our shared culture. McClay describes his book as “a patriotic endeavor as well as a scholarly one.” In his introduction, McClay explains that the purpose of his text is: to offer...

A soon-to-be-released updated edition of an Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History textbook teaches students that white Christian Americans are finding it “difficult to adjust” to becoming a minority and puts forward the perception that President Donald Trump’s election occurred because his apparent “racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” James Fraser’s By the People: A History of the United States, 2ndEdition, is published by Pearson and has a 2019 copyright date. Alex Clark – co-host of the Indiana-based morning radio Joe and Alex Show– tweeted photos of the cover and several pages of the book that she reports...

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture. The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said. “Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very...

As America looks back on the September 11 terrorist attack that changed the nation, the direction of education in the country seems on track to ensure that U.S. students either forget that day entirely or view it as a result of America’s own failure to be open and accepting of other cultures. Signs of the promotion of a “borderless” country that fosters unfettered multiculturalism could be seen decades ago in progressive school textbooks read daily by American students. “Culture war” commentator Stanley Kurtz tells Breitbart News that the situation is likely only to grow worse with the left-leaning Advanced Placement...

hen Newsweek broke the story last week that the College Board had redone its controversial 2014 AP U.S. history (APUSH) framework, the headline blared: “Revised AP U.S. History Standards Will Emphasize American Exceptionalism.” That headline was quickly echoed across the web, with Slate promising an APUSH course “Juiced Up With More ‘American Exceptionalism,’” New York Magazine following suit, and Think Progress decrying the College Board’s supposed “cave” to conservative pressure. A more accurate headline would have been, “College Board Inserts Meaningless Mention of American Exceptionalism to Shut Conservatives Up: Liberals Go Nuts.” Early coverage of the renewed APUSH controversy has...

Fifty-five scholars signed a letter released yesterday opposing the College Board’s AP U.S. History Framework. Jane Robbins of American Principles Project and retired AP US History teacher Larry Krieger brought this issue to the public’s attention last year with their op-ed in Heartlander Magazine when the framework was made public in 2014. Defenders of the changes have tried to paint those opposed to the framework as ill-informed and politically partisan or as those who want to censor unflattering history.

A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter yesterday in protest of deleterious changes to the advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) exam. The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America's unique ideals and institutions. Moms and dads in my adopted home state of Colorado have been mocked and demonized for helping to lead the fight against the anti-American changes to APUSH. But if there's any hope at all in salvaging local control over our kids' curriculum, it lies in the willingness of a broad coalition of educators and...

Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, sees America being fundamentally transformed by a host of pernicious Obama policies, including education initiatives which are nationalizing school curriculum without a single vote. This month, America’s best and brightest high school students will take a controversial new advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) test crafted by many of the same ideologues — including David Coleman — who birthed the unpopular Common Core standards for math and English. Scholarly critics of the APUSH framework, like Kurtz, are waking up to the dangers of the 70 or more pages of...

(Snip) The framework requires that all questions take up sweeping issues, such as “group identity,” which leaves little place for transcendent individuals. Men and women who were once studied as inspirational figures have become examples of trends, and usually not uplifting ones. The immigrant story that the exam tells is of oppressed people escaping to America only to find more oppression. That many came seeking the Promised Land—and found it here—is no longer part of the narrative. (Snip)

Barron’s Educational Series, the maker of popular Advanced Placement study guides, has apologized for linking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to fascism and comparing him to the KKK. The Daily Caller reported Monday about the extreme comparison, found on page 168 of the 7th edition of Barron’s AP European History study guide. “It has been brought to our attention that Barron’s AP European History, 7th Edition by Seth Roberts and James Eder contains erroneous information that casts aspersions on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,” reads a statement released by the company on Tuesday. “In an attempt to draw a comparison...