OPINION: Because that’s pretty much ALL they do nowadays …
“I love America. I love it for what it is. But I don’t always love what it does. My love for my country is not based on circumstance or performance. It is an unconditional love that does not ignore its flaws.”
So writes Zachary Cote, executive director of the history education nonprofit Thinking Nation, in Education Week. And I agree.
It springs to mind the classic mid-80s comics panel by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli (pictured) of Captain America holding Old Glory and correcting a corrupt general who swarmily invoked “loyalty.”
Competent history teachers should teach the bad of America — along with good! — in a fair, commonsense manner. Unfortunately, I’ve seen folks like Cote express these sentiments before, and it all sounds good — on the surface.
Eventually they’ll say something like Cote in his recent piece:
[S]chools need to reevaluate history instruction to empower students to contemplate historical tensions and enable a type of patriotism that transcends our polarizing moment …
A focus on content makes us choose between 1619 and 1776; a disciplinary approach empowers us to recognize the historical significance of both. A history education that prioritizes what needs to be learned forces us to choose between Juneteenth and Independence Day. A discipline that instructs us how we can learn more deeply about our nation’s past enables us to celebrate both.
Hmm. Notice there’s always worries about “polarization” when there’s a Republican in the White House, most especially Donald Trump who’s said he wants a “celebration of America’s greatness and history.”
Cote worries his edicts will “deemphasize” tragedies such as the fate of Native Americans and blacks during Reconstruction.
And does anybody really buy that contemporary teachers are “deemphasizing” topics like slavery, the plight of Native Americans and the like? The pushback (for lack of a better term) from Trump and others on the right arguably comes from an overemphasis on such topics … to the exclusion of other material.
MORE: Progressives’ inanity is their greatest weakness
After all, how did so many college students come to believe slavery was an “almost exclusively an American phenomenon”? How can over 90 percent know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but less than 10 percent know he was president?
How is it that factually dubious programs like the 1619 Project are quickly embraced by modern educators, but initiatives like these draw scorn?
I’d really like to take Cote at his word, I really would. But his organization’s website doesn’t exactly assist in the confidence arena.
The stated mission of Thinking Nation is to “empower students to thrive as engaged and critical thinkers, support teachers with meaningful curricula, training, and technology, [and] “transform social studies education for the future of democracy.” And its main page says “Historical Thinking Promotes Equity.”
“Critical,” “transform,” and especially “equity” should immediately set off skepticism alarms.
Not to mention, one of the organization’s board of directors is Catherine O’Donnell, a history professor at Arizona State University. A few years back, O’Donnell co-penned an article in which she lamented certain areas of academia no longer are “publicly perceived as authoritative,” and that alleged experts “enjoy no special public esteem.”
The culprits behind this perception? The Free-Speech Right. Naturally.
MORE: Judging the past by the present: Progressives must believe they’re the ultimate evolution
IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: Captain America corrects a corrupt general; Daredevil #233/Reddit