Politics Is Changing the Way History Is Taught< creigalt2 >
How Politics Is Changing the Way History Is Taught
History lessons are being wiped from the internet, and California is retreating from ethnic studies, as education swings away from curriculums that are seen as too progressive.
By Dana Goldstein
In the Trump era, history and civics education are under a microscope.
Several major curriculum publishers have withdrawn products from the market, while others have found that teachers are shying away from lessons that were once uncontroversial, on topics as basic as constitutional limits on executive power.
California, the nation’s largest Democratic-led state, has passed a law restricting what teachers can say in the classroom, and has walked back an effort to require high school students to take classes in ethnic studies.
To supporters of these changes, they are a necessary corrective to what they see as a leftward tilt in the education establishment. But these developments have also set off alarms among free speech advocates, as the Trump administration pushes to punish speech it dislikes and to impose its patriotic vision of American history on schools.
Adam Laats, a historian of education at Binghamton University, noted that school curriculum had been restricted before, notably during the Red Scares of the last century. But the current political pressure is unique, he said: “Never before has this kind of fervor from the right owned the Oval Office.”