Great advice for teachers and leaders in social studies education, I share your concerns - or better said, fear. I noticed statements from the AHA, and the NCSS (though they took a while), and am encouraged by the American Association of University Professors. There are (hopefully) other examples of national organizations declaring their support for academic freedom and unfettered history education. Yet state and local organizations, to my knowledge, have been silent. Teachers, school leaders, central administrators need these organizations to stand up. State-level affiliated councils of the NCSS and state departments of education (I'm looking at you New Jersey) need to provide vocal support. We're all on the Pettus Bridge now. We're all on Bunker Hill, Seminary Ridge and deep in the snows of the Ardennes.
The war against secondary teachers has also been going on at the college level. Various states have stuck their noses into determining what history and social studies professors can teach. This attack across the board threatens American education as a whole.
Yes, and gotta love the irony and the truth compressed into that headline: "Trump Administration Calls On Teachers to Indoctrinate Students in American History."
Please support your teachers at the local level. Research school board candidates to make certain they are not being funded or supported by groups like moms for Liberty. Show up to school board meetings if you can. Are there groups that would legally support a teacher under fire, such as the ACLU? Contribute and amplify their message.
Unfortunately as a teacher you cannot just stay out of it. Your very existence makes you a target. Might as well fight back.
It is fascinating that I teach hight school history in a private Christian Collegiate Academy, and I can teach the gory details about slavery, racism, the crimes against Native Americans and Mexicans through Manifest Destiny, and use my book, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond” as a textbook that the school purchases. My presence as a published historian helps them with accreditation and provides a certain credibility that many religious schools do not have. They know that I could easily be teaching at the college level.
Our school has a reading list that includes many books that Mom’s For Liberty are getting banned across the country. No student or parent has ever criticized my teaching or subject matter. We also have a significant number of international students including students from Turkey, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Japan, China, Croatia, and South Korea. They pay good money to come here because our school sends many graduates to elite universities.
These laws and mandates are nothing more than the attempts of militant Christian Nationalists to impose their beliefs on students by forcing teachers to comply with them through the brute force of the Federal Government.
Keep on writing and informing teachers of what is going on my friend.
I taught American history at an elite private school in Virginia. The parents tended to lean conservative in their politics, but I can count on one hand the number of parents that ever expressed concern about what I was teaching. In addition to the survey (AP) course in American history I taught electives on the Civil War, Civil War memory, Women's history and even a team-taught class called Race and Gender.
We set our own curriculum and enjoyed a good deal of freedom. We were treated as the professionals we are. But again, the parents left us alone. They trusted us as long as we kept the lines of communication open.
It's a reminder to me of just how manufactured this current crisis over content has become.
I probably would not have read the EO had Kevin not posted this. It is clearly concerning and bothersome on several levels. It creates a tone that will, as Kevin pointed out, empower groups like Mom's for Liberty and if not them the local Mega nuts to go after teachers and local school boards. I think some of the points in the Order, around Trans specifically, are solutions in search of issues to resolve.
While I think the EO does smack of executive over reach I also think Trump will be able to leverage access to federal funds to get State Education Agencies and Local Education Agencies to do some of this. Maybe most of it. In states like mine, Minnesota, there will be push back. In others not so much. But no matter where they are public employees do have to be careful. They are still public employees and it isn't that hard to terminate someone (speaking as a former public employee Union leader).
I think we have to be supportive of teachers, museum workers, librarians and anyone I am leaving out who should be on this list. Speak out, take positions, be politically active and try to do what you can, with what you have where you are (supposedly attributed to Theodore Roosevelt).
I have no doubt that Trump will attempt to exercise control by leveraging access to federal funds. The EO suggests as much.
The sad thing is that the vast majority of history teachers have no interest in engaging in this political debate. They want to be left alone and supported.
Speaking as a Middle School History teacher, I absolutley just want to be left alone to communicate my passions with students. I understand the importance of speaking up and resisting or however one would like to lable it, but man, I cannot express how much I do not want to be in the center of political discourse.
Yet here I am.
Given my special interests like in the American West, especially Westward Expansion, the language surrounding how Native American history is taught disturbs me.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for everything you do for your students.
It's really a no-win situation. Speaking out is fraught with problems, but not speaking out may leave teachers exposed as well in different ways. I wish I had the answers. All the best to you.
I suspect you are correct and did you ever think you would find yourself on the same side as Chris Christie? According to a new story making the rounds Christie recently questioned Trump's knowledge of American history while appearing on Jon Stewart's show.
Whoever wrote the article is PURPOSELY AVOIDING THE POINT that since the Obama administration kids have been taught to hate this country and especially since the FRAUDULENT AND SINCE DEBUNKED 1619 project it's gotten worse students are not taught that Frederick Douglas refused to condemn the constitution instead calling it A LIBERTY DOCUMENT AND THROUGH IT HIS PEOPLE WILL BE FREED and how black Americans fought for it and America went to war with itself to make this country line up with our Declaration of Independence
When the New York Times Magazine deployed it into the history wars, a Wall Street Journal op-ed blasted it. I have my own complaints about it, and the WSJ published them in a 2019 letter. But in online comments--for years--I've found myself repeatedly asking blasters if they have even read Nikole Hannah-Jones's introductory overview. Do you even know, I'd ask, how her dad and Old Glory, from her Iowa childhood, fit in? I get responses, often hostile, but seldom addressing my question.
My main complaint about the 1619 Project, despite its generally strong support for America's first principles--for what you aptly call making "this country line up with our Declaration of Independence"--is that it specifically scants the self-emancipation movement. Hundreds of thousands of freedom-striving slavery escapees figured centrally in emancipation's political evolution. They were as American as you can get. But even the 1619 Project scants them.
One other thing: I think that "kids have been taught to hate this country" is often what the actual America-haters charge, in part out of feelings of guilt that they shouldn't logically hold anyhow, and in part out of obstinate, destructive, bitterness-based refusal to face history whole.
The 1619 Project has big problems, but it also made a big contribution to national civic memory by highlighting the widely scanted actualities of a group experience central to our history: the Black one. It should be considered--critically considered, problems and all--by upper-level high school students and in colleges.
I share some of your concerns re: the 1619 Project. Its publication in the NYTs and its reception scared the daylights out of conservatives. People were actually reading history. Jones's introduction is a mixed bag in terms of its understanding of key elements of history. Most people, however, miss the fact that it is, in part, a beautiful family story that reflects a deep desire to identify as an American.
We also need to keep in mind that the 1619 Project is made up of numerous essays. Many of them are incredibly thoughtful.
That said, I think you are right that the vast majority of people who attack Jones have not read a word of it.
Thanks, and forgive me for going back to something we were discussing the other day: the word "conservative."
The 1619 Project did indeed scare the daylights out of many who arrogate to themselves the descriptor "conservative," and probably some of the daylights-challenged were genuine conservatives.
But what's also true, if you ask me--which you did not, but when did that ever stop me?--is that despite the project's flaws and worse, the leader and her contributors were actually ***themselves*** doing something profoundly conservative: they were seeking clear understanding of what dedication to the Declaration means.
(Also if you ask me: People are right who declare that the Constitution is the handbook, but the Declaration is the foundational statement.)
You obviously didn't read the AHA report on what students are actually taught about American history, which I linked to in the post. That is your choice. There is no evidence that teachers are utilizing the 1619 Project to any great extent. Such an accusation suggests that you know nothing about how curriculum is managed in the various states. Because of that, I have nothing more to say to you.
The Republican leadership and their billionaire supporters have been planning these Executive Orders for at least four years, since Trump's unexpected defeat in 2020. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is their roadmap and most of the EO's are taken directly from it. In keeping with Trump Republican tradition, every accusation is a confession. The teachers in the public schools are not indoctrinating, as they falsely accuse, the Republican regime intends to do that. The Trump Administration has many goals, but they center on the subversion and ultimate disassembly of our nation's infrastructure so that the country can be remade as an authoritarian state with oligarchs owning the pieces. The public process Trump et al. use is well-known now: use falsehoods and misinformation to denigrate part of our current infrastructure -- science, medicine, education, law, governance -- and then the Republican base will go along with the deconstruction, destruction, elimination of that part and its reconstruction through the Trump goals. Ruin the public's view of our education system, disassemble the system, then reconstruct it as a private enterprise. The castigation of history teachers in public schools is just one example of this approach.
You are absolutely right that this EO is part of a broader push among conservative think tanks and other organizations to shape how history and other subjects are taught in our public schools.
Regarding history specifically, I have always maintained that we should be talking about how it is taught along with the content introduced, but that is not what we witnessed in the first Trump administration or what we are currently seeing.
It is not the job of history teachers to defend themselves against a baseless accusation that is so contradictory and ludicrous. Thank you for writing this.
I've learned to assume that every accusation from Trump is a confession. "Stop the steal" meant "steal this election" and in this case "ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling" means "we are beginning radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling."
Great advice for teachers and leaders in social studies education, I share your concerns - or better said, fear. I noticed statements from the AHA, and the NCSS (though they took a while), and am encouraged by the American Association of University Professors. There are (hopefully) other examples of national organizations declaring their support for academic freedom and unfettered history education. Yet state and local organizations, to my knowledge, have been silent. Teachers, school leaders, central administrators need these organizations to stand up. State-level affiliated councils of the NCSS and state departments of education (I'm looking at you New Jersey) need to provide vocal support. We're all on the Pettus Bridge now. We're all on Bunker Hill, Seminary Ridge and deep in the snows of the Ardennes.
Fascinating read. I translated it into Croatian and shared it on my history teachers network.
Thank you for translating and sharing it with your network. And thanks also for subscribing. Great to have you on board.
I wonder if anything by Bill Blum will make it into the curriculum.
The war against secondary teachers has also been going on at the college level. Various states have stuck their noses into determining what history and social studies professors can teach. This attack across the board threatens American education as a whole.
He wants teachers to say history began when his pimp of a grandfather illegally entered the U.S. via Canada.
Excellent post Kevin… this is very concerning… as is virtually everything currently coming from the White House
Yes, and gotta love the irony and the truth compressed into that headline: "Trump Administration Calls On Teachers to Indoctrinate Students in American History."
Please support your teachers at the local level. Research school board candidates to make certain they are not being funded or supported by groups like moms for Liberty. Show up to school board meetings if you can. Are there groups that would legally support a teacher under fire, such as the ACLU? Contribute and amplify their message.
Unfortunately as a teacher you cannot just stay out of it. Your very existence makes you a target. Might as well fight back.
Great advice, Gigi.
Kevin,
It is fascinating that I teach hight school history in a private Christian Collegiate Academy, and I can teach the gory details about slavery, racism, the crimes against Native Americans and Mexicans through Manifest Destiny, and use my book, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond” as a textbook that the school purchases. My presence as a published historian helps them with accreditation and provides a certain credibility that many religious schools do not have. They know that I could easily be teaching at the college level.
Our school has a reading list that includes many books that Mom’s For Liberty are getting banned across the country. No student or parent has ever criticized my teaching or subject matter. We also have a significant number of international students including students from Turkey, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Japan, China, Croatia, and South Korea. They pay good money to come here because our school sends many graduates to elite universities.
These laws and mandates are nothing more than the attempts of militant Christian Nationalists to impose their beliefs on students by forcing teachers to comply with them through the brute force of the Federal Government.
Keep on writing and informing teachers of what is going on my friend.
Steve Dundas
Hi Steven,
I taught American history at an elite private school in Virginia. The parents tended to lean conservative in their politics, but I can count on one hand the number of parents that ever expressed concern about what I was teaching. In addition to the survey (AP) course in American history I taught electives on the Civil War, Civil War memory, Women's history and even a team-taught class called Race and Gender.
We set our own curriculum and enjoyed a good deal of freedom. We were treated as the professionals we are. But again, the parents left us alone. They trusted us as long as we kept the lines of communication open.
It's a reminder to me of just how manufactured this current crisis over content has become.
That’s what it takes.
I probably would not have read the EO had Kevin not posted this. It is clearly concerning and bothersome on several levels. It creates a tone that will, as Kevin pointed out, empower groups like Mom's for Liberty and if not them the local Mega nuts to go after teachers and local school boards. I think some of the points in the Order, around Trans specifically, are solutions in search of issues to resolve.
While I think the EO does smack of executive over reach I also think Trump will be able to leverage access to federal funds to get State Education Agencies and Local Education Agencies to do some of this. Maybe most of it. In states like mine, Minnesota, there will be push back. In others not so much. But no matter where they are public employees do have to be careful. They are still public employees and it isn't that hard to terminate someone (speaking as a former public employee Union leader).
I think we have to be supportive of teachers, museum workers, librarians and anyone I am leaving out who should be on this list. Speak out, take positions, be politically active and try to do what you can, with what you have where you are (supposedly attributed to Theodore Roosevelt).
I have no doubt that Trump will attempt to exercise control by leveraging access to federal funds. The EO suggests as much.
The sad thing is that the vast majority of history teachers have no interest in engaging in this political debate. They want to be left alone and supported.
Speaking as a Middle School History teacher, I absolutley just want to be left alone to communicate my passions with students. I understand the importance of speaking up and resisting or however one would like to lable it, but man, I cannot express how much I do not want to be in the center of political discourse.
Yet here I am.
Given my special interests like in the American West, especially Westward Expansion, the language surrounding how Native American history is taught disturbs me.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for everything you do for your students.
It's really a no-win situation. Speaking out is fraught with problems, but not speaking out may leave teachers exposed as well in different ways. I wish I had the answers. All the best to you.
I suspect you are correct and did you ever think you would find yourself on the same side as Chris Christie? According to a new story making the rounds Christie recently questioned Trump's knowledge of American history while appearing on Jon Stewart's show.
Whoever wrote the article is PURPOSELY AVOIDING THE POINT that since the Obama administration kids have been taught to hate this country and especially since the FRAUDULENT AND SINCE DEBUNKED 1619 project it's gotten worse students are not taught that Frederick Douglas refused to condemn the constitution instead calling it A LIBERTY DOCUMENT AND THROUGH IT HIS PEOPLE WILL BE FREED and how black Americans fought for it and America went to war with itself to make this country line up with our Declaration of Independence
1619 Project:
When the New York Times Magazine deployed it into the history wars, a Wall Street Journal op-ed blasted it. I have my own complaints about it, and the WSJ published them in a 2019 letter. But in online comments--for years--I've found myself repeatedly asking blasters if they have even read Nikole Hannah-Jones's introductory overview. Do you even know, I'd ask, how her dad and Old Glory, from her Iowa childhood, fit in? I get responses, often hostile, but seldom addressing my question.
My main complaint about the 1619 Project, despite its generally strong support for America's first principles--for what you aptly call making "this country line up with our Declaration of Independence"--is that it specifically scants the self-emancipation movement. Hundreds of thousands of freedom-striving slavery escapees figured centrally in emancipation's political evolution. They were as American as you can get. But even the 1619 Project scants them.
One other thing: I think that "kids have been taught to hate this country" is often what the actual America-haters charge, in part out of feelings of guilt that they shouldn't logically hold anyhow, and in part out of obstinate, destructive, bitterness-based refusal to face history whole.
The 1619 Project has big problems, but it also made a big contribution to national civic memory by highlighting the widely scanted actualities of a group experience central to our history: the Black one. It should be considered--critically considered, problems and all--by upper-level high school students and in colleges.
I share some of your concerns re: the 1619 Project. Its publication in the NYTs and its reception scared the daylights out of conservatives. People were actually reading history. Jones's introduction is a mixed bag in terms of its understanding of key elements of history. Most people, however, miss the fact that it is, in part, a beautiful family story that reflects a deep desire to identify as an American.
We also need to keep in mind that the 1619 Project is made up of numerous essays. Many of them are incredibly thoughtful.
That said, I think you are right that the vast majority of people who attack Jones have not read a word of it.
> scared the daylights out of conservatives
Thanks, and forgive me for going back to something we were discussing the other day: the word "conservative."
The 1619 Project did indeed scare the daylights out of many who arrogate to themselves the descriptor "conservative," and probably some of the daylights-challenged were genuine conservatives.
But what's also true, if you ask me--which you did not, but when did that ever stop me?--is that despite the project's flaws and worse, the leader and her contributors were actually ***themselves*** doing something profoundly conservative: they were seeking clear understanding of what dedication to the Declaration means.
(Also if you ask me: People are right who declare that the Constitution is the handbook, but the Declaration is the foundational statement.)
Like any work of history it needs to be analyzed in light of the relevant historiography.
But let me say that I admire NHJ. She published an incredibly thoughtful publication that got people talking and engaged. It was itself an event.
You obviously didn't read the AHA report on what students are actually taught about American history, which I linked to in the post. That is your choice. There is no evidence that teachers are utilizing the 1619 Project to any great extent. Such an accusation suggests that you know nothing about how curriculum is managed in the various states. Because of that, I have nothing more to say to you.
The Republican leadership and their billionaire supporters have been planning these Executive Orders for at least four years, since Trump's unexpected defeat in 2020. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is their roadmap and most of the EO's are taken directly from it. In keeping with Trump Republican tradition, every accusation is a confession. The teachers in the public schools are not indoctrinating, as they falsely accuse, the Republican regime intends to do that. The Trump Administration has many goals, but they center on the subversion and ultimate disassembly of our nation's infrastructure so that the country can be remade as an authoritarian state with oligarchs owning the pieces. The public process Trump et al. use is well-known now: use falsehoods and misinformation to denigrate part of our current infrastructure -- science, medicine, education, law, governance -- and then the Republican base will go along with the deconstruction, destruction, elimination of that part and its reconstruction through the Trump goals. Ruin the public's view of our education system, disassemble the system, then reconstruct it as a private enterprise. The castigation of history teachers in public schools is just one example of this approach.
Hi Stiv,
Great to hear from you. I hope all is well.
You are absolutely right that this EO is part of a broader push among conservative think tanks and other organizations to shape how history and other subjects are taught in our public schools.
Regarding history specifically, I have always maintained that we should be talking about how it is taught along with the content introduced, but that is not what we witnessed in the first Trump administration or what we are currently seeing.
It is not the job of history teachers to defend themselves against a baseless accusation that is so contradictory and ludicrous. Thank you for writing this.
No, it isn't, but we live in a society that doesn't value public education. That forces us to take a stand.
I've learned to assume that every accusation from Trump is a confession. "Stop the steal" meant "steal this election" and in this case "ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling" means "we are beginning radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling."
Excellent article. If you are interested in a detailed backstory of last century’s successful effort to “re-white” American history textbooks, may I point you to: https://bsky.app/profile/politenolonger.bsky.social/post/3lgzzptremk2x
I was glad I read the brief essay linked from here. Great stuff. Thanks for posting.