7/9/2021 America’s history wars | The Economist
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United States Jul 10th 2021 edition
Patriotism and polarisation
America’s history wars
The fight over critical race theory in schools is part of a century-long battle over whose
version of America is taught
Jul 10th 2021
WASHINGTON, DC
P arents are outraged by a new curriculum. Politicians worry that educators
are indoctrinating pupils with un-American revisionist history. Progressives
argue that this updated version of the curriculum reflects an American reality
that should not be hidden from children. Both sides clash at school meetings,
teachers are under fire. At issue could be the current controversy over critical
Special
race theory in classrooms. Or it could be one offer:
of the enjoyskirmishes
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past century over history education from whether it was pro-British to whether
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past century over history education, from whether it was pro British to whether
it was pro-Marxist.
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Critical race theory (crt), which has become the battleground this time,
originated in the 1970s as a legal perspective that emphasised the role of
systemic racism (as opposed to the individual sort) in replicating inequality. The
Goldwater Institute, a conservative think-tank seeking to prevent the teaching of
critical race theory in schools, describes the set of ideas thus: a “perspective…
that believes all the events and ideas around us…must be explained in terms of
racial identities”. Complicating the argument is the fact that some conservatives
use the phrase to encompass everything from discussions about institutional
racism to diversity training.
Twenty-six states have introduced measures that would limit critical race theory
in public schools, according to EdWeek. Federal legislators are also piling into
the debate. Seven Republican senators, including the minority leader, Mitch
McConnell, reintroduced the “Saving American History Act” in June to limit
federal funding to schools that use a curriculum derived from the 1619 Project, a
set of Pulitzer-prize-winning essays published by the New York Times magazine
that puts slavery at the centre of the nation’s founding and development (and
received mixed reviews from professional historians). The federal bill, originally
introduced in July 2020, is mostly symbolic: Congress has little control over
state and local curriculums, and the bill is unlikely to pass when there are
Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. But the politics is clear.
Republicans are convinced that a war on critical race theory is good politics,
even if attempts to ban it might prove unconstitutional.
Tennessee’s bill, signed by the governor in May, prohibits public schools from
teaching concepts that promote “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of
psychological distress”. Texas’s law specifically bans the 1619 Project, prevents
teachers from giving course credit for “social or public policy advocacy”,
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prohibits required training “that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or
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blame on the basis of race or sex”, and restricts teaching that “slavery and racism
are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to,
the authentic founding principles of the United States.” Idaho’s legislation
prevents any public institution, including colleges, from “compel[ling] students
to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to the concepts that “individuals… are
inherently responsible for actions committed in the past”. In May, Idaho’s
Lieutenant Governor assembled a taskforce “to protect our young people from
the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism, and Marxism”.
It is unclear how widely the theory, as described by either liberals or
conservatives, is being taught in classrooms. According to the Heritage
Foundation, another conservative think-tank, 43% of teachers are familiar with
crt, and only 30% of that group view it favourably (about one in ten overall).
Even so, the National Education Association (nea), America’s largest labour
union, recently issued a statement embracing crt.
This contest over how to tell the national story may seem new, but it is part of a
century-old fight. The battle began once schooling became compulsory in all
states in 1918. In the 1920s David Muzzey, a historian, was branded a traitor for
his textbook “An American History”, which, according to critics, undermined the
American spirit with pro-British distortions of the revolution and the war of
1812. According to Gary Nash, a historian, an opponent of Muzzey’s text claimed
that American children would now sing “God Save the King” instead of “Yankee
Doodle Dandy” after reading it. Attempts to ban the book were unsuccessful: it
sold millions of copies.
Choose your own textbook
Other controversies followed. In the 1930s, Harold Rugg, an education professor,
was accused of “Sovietising our children” by conservatives, who claimed that his
textbook focused on American social ills and propagated Marxism. The
McCarthy era spurred investigations into teachers labelled as Communist
sympathisers. In the 1970s textbook wars led to violence in West Virginia, where
protesters bombed schools and injured journalists over books with
controversial multicultural content. Liberals have also attempted to censor
materials. In the 1980s E.D. Hirsch, a literary critic and professor, published a list
of common knowledge for American children that became a New York Times
bestseller. Liberal critics accused Mr Hirsch of prioritising the achievements of
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white men and Western European perspectives.
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Perhaps the most analogous fight, though, was in the 1990s over voluntary
national history standards. The optional curriculum, originally conceived under
the George H.W. Bush administration and continued under Bill Clinton, was
lampooned by conservatives. Lynne Cheney, the wife of former Vice-President
Dick Cheney, who was running for president, declared her opposition in an op-
ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The End of History”. Mrs Cheney accused
the standards of “political correctness” and lamented the lack of white male
representation in the curriculum: Ulysses S. Grant had only one mention and
Robert E. Lee had none, against Harriet Tubman’s six. The Senate passed a
resolution to condemn the voluntary standards, killing the curriculum.
“These attacks are always connected to what’s going on in politics at that time,”
says Mr Nash, who helped create the voluntary national standards. The
Understanding America Study, a nationally representative survey by the
University of Southern California, found that Americans are united on the
importance of civics education for children. With little partisan disagreement, a
majority of parents agree that it is important for children to learn how the
government works (85%) and about voting requirements (79%).
But political differences emerge over who should appear prominently in history
lessons. Parental opinion diverges on the importance of learning about women
(87% of Democratic parents favour this versus 66% of Republican parents) and
non-whites (83% versus 60%). The divide is greater on discussions of inequality.
A majority of Democratic parents said it was important for pupils to learn about
racism (88%) and income inequality (84%) compared with less than half of
Republican parents (45% and 37% respectively).
Conservatives tend to argue that pupils should learn one unified, optimistic
version of American history, and that learning about specific groups is divisive.
“Critical race theory is destructive because it advocates for racial discrimination
through affinity groupings, racial guilt based on your ethnicity not your
behaviour, and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our freedom is based,”
explains Matt Beienburg of the Goldwater Institute. Meanwhile, liberals are
open to a more fragmented, less flattering version of the country’s past.
It is this view which seems to be gaining ground. Howard Zinn’s “A People’s
History of the United States” (told from the perspective of women and racial
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minorities) is also grouped under the critical-race-theory debate by the
G ld t I tit t it h ld i
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Goldwater Institute: it has sold 2m copies since 1980. The 1619 Project is taught
in many school districts including Chicago. According to the nea, nine states
and the District of Columbia have laws or policies establishing multicultural-
history or ethnic-studies curriculums.
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,
a non-profit organisation, urges liberal Americans to take conservative concerns
seriously, or potentially face a “terrifying” boost of far-right nationalism. “It is
going to get more intense as polarisation gets worse and as trust goes down,” he
says. If each successive history war grows more intense, he adds, “Where do we
end up in ten to 20 years?” 7
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "The history wars"
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