Oklahoma State Rep. Dan Fisher presumably has an array of tough issues to tackle for his state from unemployment to the environment to crime. However, Fisher has decided to take on the ignoble task of banning Advanced Placement history classes in the state because he objects to the inclusion of negative aspects of American history and the omission of material embracing “American exceptionalism.” As an academic, I have previously criticized politicians (here and here and here and here) intervening in our school system to impose their own values or priorities on educators. This however ranks as one of the worst such intrusions that we have seen.
Oklahoma has been one of the states rejecting the Common Core curriculum for K-12 programs. There are valid arguments for states in insisting on control of such curricula as a general matter even if one disagrees with the merits of objections to the common core. However, this is beyond the pale. AP classes are a mainstay of our educational system and allow students to get truly advanced studies in given subjects. I have argued for years that we need to ramp up such courses on civics and history. It is therefore particularly distressing to read Fisher’s bill. It is not only would deprive these students of advanced courses but it would place Oklahoma students at a serious disadvantage in college applications which put great weight on such courses.
Fisher’s primary objection is that the AP history courses, in his view, emphasize the wrongs about America. However, these courses allow students to study not just the triumphs but the mistakes of history so history does not repeat itself. We are not a great nation because we did not commit errors and even crimes in our past. We are a great nation because we overcome such history, recognized our failings, and become a better nation despite such failings. The Trail of Tears, Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment camps, Red Scare and other dark chapters reveal both our succumbing to fears and our transcending them. Part of AP curricula is to train students to read history in a critical and objective way. Converting our history into some Disney tale will teach students little about our country or themselves.
The “exceptionalism” of this country is precisely that we are not perfect but strive to be better.
Pogo, thanks for posting that. It deserves to be discussed. I still admire Zinn’s work, but also deeply troubled by Stalinism. But let’s use this to learn from, right? As it says in the block quote you posted, “well-meaning liberals”. What’s the time period? The 1930s, a time when fascism was in full bloom across Europe. Let’s not forget that the US worked together with Russia to defeat Nazi Germany. And yet, the horrors of Stalinism followed. This is exactly the kind of strange, intertwined fates of nation-states and different ideologies that should be discussed in history. Thanks again, I mean it.
Since this is a LAW blog and this is a Constitutional issue we might consider those aspects of this, instead of squabbling between ourselves and hurling personal insults .
I believe in the 10th amendment as being one of the most important in the Bill of Rights and is one that the States are going to need to use more and more to keep the Federal Government in check.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people To the states OR to the people
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791.[1] It expresses the principle of federalism, which undergirds the entire plan of the original Constitution, by stating that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it by the states or the people. In drafting this amendment, its framers had two purposes in mind: first, as a necessary rule of construction; and second, as a reaffirmation of the nature of the federal system.
There is NO where in the Constitution the power of the Federal Government to micromanage the education system. No power to even mandate a national education system or any power to DEMAND that the States comply with a Federal Education System. Those powers reside in the STATES or to THE PEOPLE.
Each State is within their rights to create, manage and maintain a system that THEY and the people in the individual State agree with. As a private citizen one of THE PEOPLE, we should also have the right to disagree with the State’s curriculum and either choose alternate schools from the State’s system, (charter schools, private schools) or go to a home schooling program.
If you don’t like the laws in Oklahoma or any other State, you have the right to try to change those or move to another State more to your liking. This is the beauty of the Federal System. Each State, while being part of the whole, is also a unique and separate entity.
Against postmodern thought infecting today’s schools”
“If men assume that norms are no better than the pompous fabrications of their ancestors, got up to serve the interests of a faction or an age, then every rising generation will challenge the principles of personal and social order, and will learn wisdom only through agony.”
Russell Kirk
Aridog: 🙂 Yep, what I see is that anyone is capable of melting down in a heap of overflowing scorn, if they get sucked into a meaningless altercation. But I’m still here, and even with the petty skirmishes, I appreciate JT and the threads he inspires.
I think it is wise to have these debates over what is taught to students.
But the Democrats own the Teacher’s unions and Common Core is a result of far left influence.
If you want the politics out of teaching, well, it’s far too late for that.
At this point is sounds more like a complaint about whose ox is being gored, while not opposing ox-goring at all.
Thanks,publius, A while back, I finally learned how to think in terms of both/and rather than either/or. It opened up my thinking, made it impossible to be aligned with a single political party or point or view [liberation!!], and it frustrates and confuses some people. I struggle with it every day, however, as it is a very hard thing to do! Thanks for your support. I’m never going back!
Pogo, Superb rebuttal.
“Why, for example, does Zinn have to be demonized? ”
“FBI files demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that Zinn — author of A People’s History of the United States, widely used as a textbook or supplement in many of our nation’s high schools and universities — was a card-carrying Communist at a time when the Soviet Union was America’s most dreaded enemy.
… According to the FBI, this informant gave the agency a photo of Zinn teaching his 1951 “basic Marxism” class to fellow CPUSA members in Brooklyn….George Kirschner was a union official at a Brooklyn brewery who, decades later, became a teacher and collaborated with Zinn on a 1995 wall-chart version of A People’s History of the United States. The informant’s account indicates that the association between Zinn and Kirschner (who died in 2008) began in the Communist Party in the late 1940s. Like Zinn, Kirschner was a World War II veteran, and they could have met through the Communist-infiltrated American Veterans Committee, in which Zinn was a ranking local official.
…Anyone might have innocently joined a Communist “front” group — indeed, during his New Deal years as a self-described “hemophiliac liberal,” Ronald Reagan had naively joined two such groups. But Zinn was implicated as a member of multiple Communist fronts and, tellingly, was a local officer of the American Veterans Committee at the very time when that group was identified as having been taken over by Communists.
The timing of Zinn’s Communist involvement is also important. Many well-meaning liberals had been drawn into the CPUSA during the “Popular Front” era of the 1930s, when America was menaced by the Great Depression at home and the rising specter of fascism abroad. Misleading press accounts of the Soviet Union’s “progress” during those years helped convinced many idealists that the Bolshevik Revolution represented a hopeful future.
By the late 1940s, however, those illusions had been shattered by the reality of Josef Stalin’s brutal totalitarianism. …Zinn evidently pursued his CPUSA activism even after the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon in 1949 and after the Cold War turned hot with the June 1950 outbreak of the Korean War.
Revelation of Zinn’s support for Stalinism is unlikely to affect his standing with liberals“
Publius … pay attention! It’s all Paul C’s fault! Everyone else is the picture of decorum…oh, wait… 🙂
Anyway, I realize I’m not a long-time poster, so I don’t have much ‘street cred’ as it were. But I did want to let you know that there others out there who care about the US and its political tradition (without which we wouldn’t be able to have this discussion in quite this way), but are simultaneously capable of engaging in critique. It’s always unpersuasive when insults are hurled. It doesn’t advance your argument, and it suggests that you’re not interested in understanding the issues.
” In France, a country with vastly superior results in the K-12 experience, the curriculum is the same for all students”
1. The population of France is about 63 million people, smaller than California and Texas combined (65M).
2. It now has 40,000 cars burn every year at the hand of its ‘immigrants’, and the Jews are leaving in droves (again), so I’m uncertain how ‘successful’ their curriculum is.
Vis-Ã -vis Common Core: yes, there are definitely flaws, and we should be wary of any one-size-fits-all educational plan. I’m just a little surpised at the vitriol that’s going in all directions here. Why, for example, does Zinn have to be demonized? Why has David Hume been conflated with a supposed radical cadre of educators who allegedly seek to undermine critical thinking?
publius – Howard Zinn is used by a lot of high school history teachers as a source. Sadly, he is factually challenged. High school students do not have enough background to know he is factually challenged so they think his ‘facts’ are real. When they go to college they are no longer required to take US history is college so they are still relying on Zinn’s ‘facts’. And they will until someone straightens them out. Even Zinn’s closest friends admit he was factually challenged.
I believe in meaningful discussion, and it’s certainly possible to have this. The material that JT offers deserves a mature conversation. I don’t know anyone here, and I don’t mind that people have different points of view. I wish everyone well.
Common Core is well intended. But, we all know w/ what the road to hell is paved.
Paul, are you hell bent on derailing this excellent thread? Why? I get that you don’t like what Professor Turley has said here, but perhaps you should show a modicum of respect for him and the subject matter. This thread isn’t ‘All about Paul’. Try to behave yourself and quit acting like a complete ass. You’ve embarrased yourself, but I doubt you’ll recognize it.
Inga – I made a mature comment which you failed to deal with. I have suggested dual credit classes which actually are better accepted than AP classes. I even responded appropriately to Porkchop after his comment about his child having problems with dual credit classes and how we handled them here. I responded to Nick about how I personally tried to teach both sides of issues in my classes.
So far all you have done it try to belittle me and my teaching.
Alyssa, old nurse, et al.: thank your restoring my faith that there are others who are capable of a nuanced view. Of course, criticizing a system doesn’t mean you don’t care about it. It’s also possible to believe in freedom and have a social conscience at the same time. We should be working to find ways in which both liberty and equality can thrive. It’s incredibly destructive to pit one against the other, as some do.
Sorry…the above post is incomplete, some how the full text didn’t make it: here it is…
I now think I was very fortunate to be born and educated in the time I was…e.g., born 1942 & schooled from 1946 through 1968. The High School syllabus & curriculum were laid on a single 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper. American History was a Junior high school year course, covering several texts and both the warts and accomplishments in our history. The warts and accomplishments were compared and discussed. We were not taught “American Exceptionalism”…we came to that conclusion, for the most part, on our own…as 16-17 year olds. IN college, in the 1960’s we had both right wing and literally communist instructors, all of whom expected robust discussion…it was the day and time of seminar classes. None demanded we adhere to their brand, but demanded that we defend our brands. The conclusion seemed obvious to us because, yes we had ugly things in the past that we tried hard to ameliorate and in most cases, succeeded, and some case still need to try harder…the “exceptional part” came with the knowledge that perfection is a goal, not state of mind at any one point in time.
I frankly do not understand the education mind set today…we seem to presume kids are dumb or to be “molded” as if from clay. Left to their own devices, kids are curious and smarter than we might think…and I am grateful I had teachers and professors who seemed to appreciate that simple fact. They encouraged exploration and research…don’t come to class with drivel, cite something. I had high SAT’s and believe that was because we were expected to achieve and learn, with individual effort as part of the mix. Is this feature lost today?
At times I wish there was an “edit” feature here, or at least a “delete” and report feature. I’d appear less an idiot if that was so 🙂
Inga – is it alright if I address your sock puppets?
Isaac, The US is much too provincial and independent to ever abide an education system totally controlled by the Federal govt. France is much different than the US. Size wise, culturally, etc. to compare the 2 countries is fundamentally flawed. We agree totally that the US education system is dysfunctional. And, from prior discussions, we agree on some of the reasons. We will never agree in the monolithic education model you propose.
Nick – Common Core is the Federal Government’s attempt to take over the local school systems. We need to get rid of the Federal Department of Education.
“American Exceptionalism”…we came to that conclusion, for the most part, on our own…as 16-17 year olds. In college, in the 1960’s we had both right wing and literally communist instructors, all of whom expected robust discussion…it was the day and time of seminar classes. None demanded we adhere to their brand, but demanded that we defend our brands. The conclusion seemed obvious to us because, yes we had ugly things in the past that we tried hard to ameliorate and in most cases, succeeded, and some case still needed to try harder…the “exceptional part” came with the knowledge that perfection is a goal, not state of mind at any one point in time.
I frankly do not understand the education mind set today…we seem to presume kids are dumb or to be “molded” as if from clay. Left to their own devices, kids are curious and smarter than we might think…and I am grateful I had teachers and professors who seemed to appreciate that simple fact. They encouraged exploration and research (in libraries, since the Internet wasn’t around yet) …don’t come to class with drivel, cite something. I had high SAT’s and believe that was because we were expected to achieve and learn, with individual effort as part of the mix. Is this feature lost today?
I cite the range of teachers in college as from far left to far right because, in the end, they were “teachers” not indoctrinators in my day…I guess I was just lucky. No one party controlled our education, good instructors did that by accepting different opinions so long as you could and would support them, in front of the whole class. One of the best in my college days was a card carrying Communist, who gave a couple of us 4.0’s for our diligence, event hough he did not think we were right, otherwise. When fairness is absent in the classroom, it is not education, it is indoctrination…which I was spared due to the war years from WWII, to Korea, to Vietnam, when I took the opportunity to participate…and learn as much as I could about those local nationals amongst which we fought. A couple from those days remain in contact to this day via an email “rat line” of RVN vets, so to speak. I appreciate every one of them….we “taught” each other and came out better for it.