MHUSD proposed ethnic studies curriculum rife with historical errors?

Locals are raising concerns over Morgan Hill USD's ethnic studies curriculum, on which the board will vote tonight. A careful reading of the course description reveals some surprising assertions: including that evictions enforce racism (p. 11), that “seeking out like-minded people” is a form of biased hate (p. 10), and that the 1619 Project is a helpful informational resource (p. 12). The American Revolution Institute reports that the Times' controversial 1619 Project makes ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims about history while encouraging racial division.

The 1619 Project curriculum is actually worse than the dishonest and deceptive material on which it is based. A mature adult reader of the 1619 Project may be equipped to apply critical reasoning to its claims—particularly Hannah-Jones’ claim that the purpose of the American Revolution was to perpetuate slavery. We cannot reasonably expect middle school and high school students, to whom we ought to be teaching critical reasoning skills, to bring the same kind of skepticism to their reading of works we assign them. The 1619 Project curriculum goes out of its way to avoid a critical reading of Hannah-Jones central claims. It expects student to accept her conclusions about the nature of American history and culture without critical inquiry and asks them to regard the world around them from Hannah-Jones’ perspective, rather than treat Hannah-Jones as one of many interpreters, much less recognize her as a journalist with no credentials or standing as an historian.

The premise of the curriculum is that Nikole Hannah-Jones has discovered a fundamental truth about American history that has eluded the historical profession: that the central, defining feature of American history and culture is racism. The exercises that make up this curriculum are all based on this premise.

None of those exercises invite students to challenge the premise. Every exercise involves asking students a loaded question—a question that presupposes the relevant facts and serves the questioner’s agenda. The effect is the same as asking an innocent man if he has stopped beating his wife. The only sensible response is to dispute the premise by saying “I have never beaten my wife.” But students are rarely welcome to dispute the premise of their teachers’ questions.

Indeed in the current cultural climate, a student brave enough to challenge the Hannah-Jones premise is quite likely to be accused of being a racist—the fastest route to such a charge at this time being to challenge the thesis that something called “systemic racism” is the defining characteristic of American history and culture. The truth of this thesis has quite suddenly become an article of faith, not subject to scrutiny or consideration using the traditional canons of evidence. The Pulitzer Center’s curriculum is not a tool for intellectual exploration or discovery. It is a catechism.

Like a catechism, it presupposes the articles of the faith—one of which is irrational and indefensible absurdity that the American Revolution was conducted to perpetuate slavery. This is, in fact, the main pillar of the faith. If, as a generation of historians from Edmund S. Morgan and Bernard Bailyn, to Gordon S. Wood have made clear, the American Revolution was a pivotal moment in the development of human freedom, the central premise of the 1619 Project is revealed as pernicious nonsense.

Under no circumstances do the creators of the 1619 Project curriculum suggest students entertain this possibility. There is no room for questioning the new revelation. This is nowhere clearer than in the centerpiece of the 1619 Project curriculum, a lesson entitled “Exploring ‘The Idea of America’ by Nikole Hannah-Jones.” In it, students are asked to read Hannah-Jones’ error-choked essay and then respond to a series of questions based on the assumption that Hannah-Jones’ claims are fact and that any assertion to the contrary is, by definition, racist.

“What examples of hypocrisy in the founding of the United States does Hannah-Jones supply?” is the lead—and leading—question. That the founding of the United States was an exercise in hypocrisy is taken for granted—because Hannah-Jones says so. The follow-up question is contorted to require students to recapitulate Hannah-Jones’ errors about the Revolution as if they were facts: “What evidence can you see for how ‘some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slaveocracy’?”

This article originally appeared in the American Revolution Institute. Read the whole thing here.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity