The College Board's Sabotage of American History

A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter yesterday in protest of deleterious changes to the advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) exam. The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America's unique ideals and institutions.

Moms and dads in my adopted home state of Colorado have been mocked and demonized for helping to lead the fight against the anti-American changes to APUSH. But if there's any hope at all in salvaging local control over our kids' curriculum, it lies in the willingness of a broad coalition of educators and parents to join in the front lines for battles exactly like this one.

As the 55 distinguished members of the National Association of Scholars explained this week, the teaching of American history faces "a grave new risk." So-called "reforms" by the College Board, which holds a virtual monopoly on A.P. testing across the country, "abandon a rigorous insistence on content" in favor of downplaying "American citizenship and American world leadership in favor of a more global and transnational perspective."

The top-down APUSH framework eschews vivid, content-rich history lessons on the Constitution for "such abstractions as 'identity,' 'peopling,' 'work, exchange and technology,' and 'human geography' while downplaying essential subjects, such as the sources, meaning and development of America's ideals and political institutions." The scholars, who hail from institutions ranging from Notre Dame and Stanford to the University of Virginia, Baylor, CUNY, Georgetown and Ohio State, decried the aggressive centralization of power over how teachers will be able to teach the story of America.

This is not a bug. It's a feature, as I've been reporting for years on Fed Ed matters. These so-called APUSH reforms by the College Board, after all, are part and parcel of a radical upheaval in testing, textbooks and educational technology. It is no coincidence that the College Board's president, David Coleman, supervised the Beltway operation that drafted, disseminated and profits from the federal Common Core standards racket.

The social justice warriors of government education have long sought, as the NAS signatories correctly diagnosed it, "to de-center American history and subordinate it to a global and heavily social-scientific perspective." Their mission is not to impart knowledge, but to instigate racial, social and class divisions. Their mission is not to assimilate new generations of students into the American way of life, but to turn them against capitalism, individualism and American exceptionalism in favor of left-wing activism and poisonous identity politics.

The late far-left historian Howard Zinn has indoctrinated generations of teachers and students who see education as a militant political "counterforce" (an echo of fellow radical academic, domestic terrorist and Hugo Chavez-admirer Bill Ayers' proclamation of education as the "motor-force of revolution.") Teachers aim to "empower" student collectivism by emphasizing "the role of working people, women, people of color and organized social movements." School officials are not facilitators of intellectual inquiry, but leaders of "social struggle."

The APUSH critics make clear in their protest letter that they champion a "warts and all" pedagogical approach to their U.S. history lessons. But they point out that "elections, wars, diplomacy, inventions, discoveries -- all these formerly central subjects tend to dissolve into the vagaries of identity-group conflict" as a result of the APUSH overhaul.

"Gone is the idea that history should provide a fund of compelling stories about exemplary people and events," the scholars point out. "No longer will students hear about America as a dynamic and exemplary nation, flawed in many respects, but whose citizens have striven through the years toward the more perfect realization of its professed ideals."

This is precisely why I dedicated the past two years to writing my latest book, "Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs." When it comes to understanding the foundations of our free-market economy, the Founding Fathers' embrace of private profit as a public good, and the boundless entrepreneurial success stories of individual American achievement, our children's diet is woefully unbalanced.

Reclaiming our kids' minds begins long before students reach the A.P. U.S. history classroom. Restoration begins at home.

The Howard Zinn propaganda work (People's History) is chock full of historical inaccuracies and was clearly presented as an anti American tool for left leaning educators.

In some parts of that book Zinn actually quotes from left wing columnists in order to provide ‘documentation’ for his distorted actually warped perspective.

Indeed ‘His Story’ and other radical liberal revisionists are a perfect example of ‘victors’ writing history. It will become much worse for posterity if some sort of braking system is not provided to halt these perverse ideologues.

This betrayal of the American heritage started after World War II. I encountered some of the propaganda, while still in High School. By the fall of 1952, as a Freshman at the same College that Michelle later graduated from much, much later, I had a real wake up call in a College Assembly addressed by Norman Cousins. He basically called for this approach, after first trying to terrorize his audience with the dangers of Nuclear War. His idea, promoted over a period of decades was that we stop teaching how America was unique, and emphasize how all peoples are alike.

At the time, I answered him in a speech over the College radio station, on "Surrender By Subterfuge." The issue is addressed at length on the Internet, Surrender By Subterfuge.

To fully understand how truly outrageous is this "let's pretend" that all peoples are equal, and all cultures, lifestyles, etc., of equivalent worth; one should look at an often overlooked aspect of the American experience--and that is that our political & legal institutions, which followed independence, were grounded on actual experience & experience based reason (Experience & Reason). Virtually every modern Socialist movement from the French Jacobins on, is based on fantasy wish lists--a pursuit of what theorists wish was reality, rather than what is.

There cannot be anything on the horizon that is more important than waking up what is left of the American understanding--as well as spirit--while there is still something left to preserve. We succeed or lose everything of true value.

William Flax

Of course, it is not just the academic approach to American & World History that is being systematically corrupted. The same perverse need to fictionalize reality for Leftist purposes, increasingly has pervaded the humanities in general.

Part of the problem--so far as enabling the corruption in academia--results from the explosion of opportunities outside those which depend upon the verbal arts--that draw off family oriented students, who would once have gone into law, literature, journalism, theology, etc., into lucrative new fields, where they can better provide for their families (a Conservative motivation).

Like it or not, we must fight on a very broad array of fronts. It is a sad truth that those motivated by hate are often more willing to sacrifice material ends, than are those motivated by love; and the forces of the Left are driven by a pathological hatred of the actual realities of human interaction & the natural order.

I remember taking the US history AP in 1984. I had gotten a 5 on the European history AP the year before and knew I could on US history.

Then came the document essay question and it was on how FDR saved America from the Depression. I decided to write what I knew to be true rather than the garbage being presented even though I knew it would kill my score. I wound up getting a 4.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.