Americans educated in government schools today are, for the most part, hopelessly ignorant of their own nation’s history! The same holds true for civics as well not to mention the history of the rest of the world, specifically the history of communism!
Whether you agree of not, note that this has all been by design! After years of corruption of history education in public schools, the NYT’s discredited “1619 Project” which tried to reframe our history through the lens of slavery, has suddenly brought the topic of history and civics in our schools to the surface.
Parents in America are suddenly starting to pay attention to what is being taught to their children at taxpayer expense. President Trump has recently recognized the “toxic propaganda” being peddled as “history” and has signed an executive order to promote “patriotic” education.
Why is this happening? The reason that history is being rewritten is not a real mystery. In George Orwell’s classic novel “1984” the totalitarian ruling party’s motto explained its strategy…”Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Whoever controls the historical narrative will be able to shape the future and we liberty-minded Americans are losing the battle for truth in a major way.
Consider the data. According to the US Department of Education 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card”, just 15% of American students were at or above the proficient level in history. In civics, less than 1 in 4 US eight grade students performed at or above the “proficient” level in 2018 on the NAEP. Consider that against the time when Americans were the best-educated people in the world, especially in history and civics. Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited America in the early to mid-1800s recorded, that, “Every citizen….is…taught the doctrines and evidences of his religion, the history of his country and the leading features of the Constitution….”
This process of rewriting our history has been a long one beginning in the 1940s. By the 1980s the situation had gotten dramatically worse. A pseudo-historian, Howard Zinn, a radical exposed in declassified FBI documents as a Communist Party member had published his book, “A People’s History of the United States”. For reasons I do not fully understand this became a favorite in public schools. More than 3 million copies have been sold shaping the minds and attitudes of countless millions of Americans, turning them against their own nation and their own political institutions. Yet the propaganda “history” book is filled with obvious lies!
This has led to a dramatic shift in Americans’ attitudes, values, beliefs, and worldview. National pride among Americans has reached historic lows according to a recently released Gallup poll. Among younger Americans only 1 in 5 are extremely proud to be American while among those 65 and older just over 50% are extremely proud. But here are the real dangers! A 2019 survey found that 7 in 10 millennials said they are likely to vote for a socialist and fully 36% support communism. Just 57% believe that the Declaration of Independence guarantees freedom and equality better than the Communist Manifesto.
These are likely the armies of young Americans rampaging through the streets rioting, looting, killing, protesting and destroying. Their goal is to fundamentally transform what they view as an evil America.
Donald Trump has promised real action to reverse the progress of the history destroyers and rewriters but whether the rot and corruption that has taken over the teaching of history and civics in America’s public schools can be reversed remains to be seen. Now that we understand what has been happening, we conservatives need to get behind serious efforts to stop the bleeding and put the truth back in the teaching of American history.