Education is a ubiquitous pillar of the American way of life, but the details within the American education system are far from universal. Despite united efforts across political parties to champion education, there are disputes in the content and powers of public schooling. Politics have consumed issues such as public school curricula and where federal and state control of public education starts and ends. These issues have been especially highlighted in history classrooms across the US. Furthermore, partisanship has reignited these problems in recent years.
A contemporary example of this is the 1776 Commission created by former President Trump in September 2020. The executive order created an education mission made up of 18 conservatives. The executive decision claims, “Many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains.” One goal of the commission explicitly states, “to ensure patriotic education–meaning the presentation of the history of the American founding and foundational principles, the examination of how the United States has grown closer to those principles throughout its history, and the explanation of why commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified.” This ideology is not unique to the Trump administration and can be found in conservative activism that pushes against “woke culture” and “liberalism in education.” While the partisan politics of education is in the spotlight again, textbook corporations also highlight the current application of these issues. In late 2015, a viral photo of a line in a widely used McGraw-Hill textbook spread across social media. The history textbook referred to the Atlantic Slave Trade as bringing “immigrant workers” from Africa to the US, with many individuals pointing out that euphemisms like these are common in history courses.
Attempts at rewriting education policy so that it romanticizes the country are not new. History has shown that politicians, whether federal or state, have no problem diminishing the severity of historical events that have targeted ethnic populations. The textbook industry and state education policies play an important role in these inaccuracies. Regardless of political leanings, it is up to state and local governments to protect honest education.
There is a long history of revisionist education in history classes across America. Revisionist education is the misrepresentation of historical phenomena in the deliberate subversion of objective history. State governments have been leaders in legislation that progressed historical revisionism. This is because the Tenth Amendment that encompasses education designates, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Many of the historically revisionist policies were enacted during turbulent times. New York was one of the first to react to World War I in 1918 by prohibiting the teaching of subjects “seditious in character, disloyal to the United States, or favorable to the cause of any foreign country with which the United States is now at war.” The Oregon State Legislature of 1922 passed a law with some of the same concerns. Section 1 of the bill declares, “No text-book shall be used in our schools which speak slightingly of the founders of the republic or, of the men who preserved the union, or which belittles or undervalues their work.” Some of the roots of these educational movements are hateful in nature. Supporters of these bills like Charles Hall and the leaders in the Oregon Republican party were prominent members of the Ku Klux Klan. These state politicians held little back, often referring to immigrants who entered the American education system as “antagonistic to the principles of our government.” Government interference with honest education became vital to the government’s response to worldly affairs. During the Cold War; the Texas Board of Education redacted textbook references to “unions, Social Security, the United Nations, racial integration” and more. Pivotal moments in US history have quite drastically shaped domestic education and this has mainly been done through state governments.
There is more than enough evidence for twentieth-century education policy being used to tidy up the reputation and ideals of the nation. The first twenty years of 2000 follow the same pattern. The College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History Program received heat in 2015 from conservatives across the country. They claimed the program lacked a great emphasis on the matchlessness of the American legacy and instead focused too much on slavery, the Civil War, and more. Oklahoma’s 2015 House Legislature passed a bill in response to the controversy with the AP U.S. History curriculum. The bill would cut funding to schools that continued to use the AP program instead of the new state-sanctioned curriculum that focuses on “the free-market economic system and American exceptionalism.” In 2017, Florida crafted a law that allows parents to object to “inappropriate or unsuitable” material in the classroom, which can result in the obligation for schools to drop that subject matter. This provision soon came to target history and science classes that taught slavery, immigration, evolution, and climate change. Partisan politics are a key influence in such policy. Republican Senator Tom Cotton introduced the Saving American History Act of 2020. The bill would eliminate federal funding for schools that incorporate the New York Times 1619 Project that details early slavery in America. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluated state standards of domestic history education and found that more than a majority of states fail to meet quality baselines such as content, rigor, and clarity. The review characterized state educational practices as “a string of politically and religiously motivated historical distortions.”
While state governments are the main impetus for historical revisionism in education, together, states and the textbook industry alter America’s public education. Two states control the entire nation’s adoption of public school textbooks. California and Texas are the largest markets for publishers and are often the states with the most difficult to navigate criteria for education. This results in publishing companies shaping their national product following the mandates set by the two state’s Boards of Education. The centralized authority in these two state’s education policy allows for great mishaps in public schooling. Texas standards require that the biblical Moses be accredited in the creation of the Constitution and California has been criticized for impeding teachers with their lengthy education standards. These mistakes spread far beyond their origin. Almost half of US states have policies that maintain state-wide textbook use. The effort to make education uniform can create faulty partisan lines in nonpartisan classrooms.
Consensus on the matter is found in the state’s power to control public education. Federalism, the layering of powers in the state and national government, is a key foundation to the many debates about education. Whether a supporter of historical revisionist education or a staunch opponent of it, all sides agree that states are the appropriate chief of education. The 1973 Supreme Court case San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez ruled that there is no right to access to education asserted in the Constitution. This leaves a large responsibility on states and state constitutions to show the power they exercise over education. Most state constitutions include provisions like “uniform” or “thorough/efficient” in their education clauses. Homogenizing education can have its advantages and disadvantages, but it is interesting to see how education clauses in states’ constitutions are also homogenized. California’s and Texas’ education clauses in their state constitutions read eerily alike. California asserts, “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement. Texas’ declares, “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” Even though these two states have almost identical education clauses, political leanings are what separates their execution of education. The previously mentioned review of state education history standards found that Texas had “made no secret of their evangelical Christian-right agenda” and have received a D letter grade. California was praised for an inclusive and expansive history curriculum and received an A-. Just because the two states have similar constitutional commitments to education does not mean they will play out the same, especially in concern with the curriculum.
The politics of education policy is constantly evolving. President Joe Biden disbanded the 1776 Commission via executive order the same day he was inaugurated. However, the debate is still very much alive. Education activists are demanding the Biden administration do more. They call for extra protections for teachers and students, so they can freely discuss domestic injustices without fear of censorship. The power of education held within state governments has been used for both unfortunate and upstanding causes, such as public schooling segregation or state-level guarantees for the right to education. Federal overreach into the domain of education should spark alarm across any political aisle. However, checks need to be put into place to make sure US states are providing a healthy and reliable education to public school students. Some activists argue that those counteractions on state power should be afforded to local governments, who can make sure state policy is in line with local communities. This argument has gained traction, but funding for this added local responsibility is not available in most localities. 71% of registered voters note that the US is stronger when it faces its mistakes of the present and past. States should keep this in mind when crafting their public schooling systems. No matter who the authority of education lies in, Americans need to weary of attempts to rewrite education policy so that it redefines who and what our nation is.