President Joe Biden recalled a recent Trump administration report aimed at promoting ‘patriotic education’ in schools, but which mocked historians and rejected them as political propaganda.
In an executive order signed on Wednesday on his first day in office, Biden dissolved Donald Trump’s presidential commission from 1776 and withdrew a report it released Monday. Trump formed the group in September to garner support from white voters and in response to The New York Times’ ‘1619 project’, which highlights the lasting effects of slavery in America.
In its report, which Trump hoped would be used in classrooms across the country, the commission glorified the country’s founders, played down America’s role in slavery, condemned the rise of progressive politics and argued that the civil rights movement “high ideals” disgusted. Advocated by the Founding Fathers.
The panel, which did not include any professional historians of the United States, complained about ‘false and fashionable ideologies’ that portray the country’s story as ‘oppression and victim’. Instead, it called for renewed efforts to promote a ‘brave and honest love for our country’.
Historians have panned the report widely, saying it presents a false and outdated version of American history that ignores decades of research.
‘This is an insult to the whole enterprise of education. “Education is supposed to help young people think critically,” said David Blight, a civil war historian at Yale University. “The report is a piece of right-wing propaganda.”
Trump officials have hailed the report as a “definitive chronicle of the American foundation,” but scholars say it does not disregard the most basic rules of science. For example, it does not provide citations or a list of source material.
It also contains several passages copied directly from other writings by members of the panel, as one professor found after executing the report using software used to detect plagiarism.
Matthew Spalding, the executive director of the panel and a vice president at the conservative Hillsdale College, denied any wrongdoing, saying the panel members’ contributed our own work and writing, under our own names, to the 1776 report. , which provides an advisory report to the President. ”
Spalding and other commission leaders did not immediately respond to other criticism of the report.
In documents announcing Biden’s executive order, administrative officials said the panel “wanted to erase the American history of racial injustice.”
The American Historical Association condemned the document, saying it glorified the founders while ignoring the history and contributions of slaves, indigenous communities and women. In a statement also signed by 13 other academic groups, the organization says the report seeks to ‘government indoctrination of American students’.
The sharpest criticism of the report is directed at the presentation of slavery and race. The report seeks to undermine the allegations of hypocrisy against founding members who possess slaves, even if they advocated equality. It also seeks to mitigate and explain America’s role in slavery as a product of the times.
“Many Americans work under the illusion that slavery was somehow a unique American evil,” the panel wrote in the 20-page report. “The unfortunate fact is that the institution of slavery throughout human history was more the rule than the exception.”
Blight, at Yale, compared it to a kind of approach to the history of sixth or seventh grade – to make the kids feel good. He added: “But it’s worse than that, because it comes from an agenda of political propaganda.”
The authors argue that the civil rights movement has been distorted to promote programs that promote inequality and ‘group privilege’. It complains, for example, about affirmative action and other forms of ‘preferential treatment’.
Ibram X. Kendi, a scholar and historian of racism at Boston University, calls the report “the last great lie of a Trump administration of great lies.”
“If we usually get preferential treatment, then why do black people stay at the bottom and baffling point of almost every racial difference?” Kendi said on Twitter. “When answering this question, they express racist ideas of black inferiority while claiming that they are ‘not racist’.”
Other scholars have emphasized what has been left out. The report contains nothing of Native American history, and the only reference to Native peoples is a racial procrastination quoted from the Declaration of Independence.
In one passage that historians have yelled at, the authors draw a comparison between the progressive movement in America and the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the report was intended to discredit contemporary public policy rooted in America’s progressive reform movement. He worries that the report, even after Biden dissolved the commission, could end up in some classrooms.
“Historians need to pay attention to curriculum discussions at local and state level,” Grossman said. “The nonsense contained in this report will be used to legitimize similar nonsense.”
At a public meeting of the commission this month, some members expressed the hope that Biden would keep the commission alive. But others said they should send the report to state and local education officials.
“It’s really up to governors and state legislators and school board members and parents and commissioners of higher education, even students, to take up this charge and continue this work,” said Doug Hoelscher, a White House assistant under Trump.
After the report was removed from a White House website, some of the authors made it available on conservative websites. In an opinion piece published by the Heritage Foundation, one of the commissioners, Mike Gonzalez, said the members “intend to continue meeting and meet the charges of our two-year term.”
The report ultimately demands a shift in teaching to schools and to American universities, which the panel describes as ‘hotspots of anti-American’. It condemns any teaching that arouses contempt for American ideals, and blames the kind of ‘destructive learning’ for the division of the country and for ‘so much violence in our cities’.
“To restore our society,” the report said, “academics must return to their calling to relentlessly pursue the truth and practice honest learning that understands the world and America’s place in it.”