APUSH banning would be detrimental
On Feb. 16, the Education Committee of the Oklahoma House voted 11-4 in favor of a bill that could potentially defund the Advanced Placement United States History program in Oklahoma public schools. Republican Rep. Dan Fisher, the bill’s author, declared his proposal to be an “emergency” bill on grounds that the new APUSH curriculum’s “emphasis of instruction is on America as a nation of oppressors and exploiters.”
Fisher garnered support from former history teacher Larry Krieger, who asserted in hearings about the bill that the new framework does not highlight “American exceptionalism” as it should, a sentiment echoed by other Republican legislators. Fisher and his cohorts wrote up a new curriculum that underscores the “positive aspects” of American history. It includes speeches from Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as required reading, but no speeches from any Democratic president after Lyndon B. Johnson.
There is great irony to be found in all of this. Fisher and his supporters are trying to boost patriotism in the American classroom in the most unpatriotic way — by denying history. The new APUSH framework is a step in the right direction for history education in this country. It adds substance to a diluted view of American history that has a propensity for glossing over the blemishes of our nation’s past. Georgia Sen. William Ligon chastised the curriculum for looking at America “through the lens of gender, race and class identity.” But this type of perspective is precisely what has been sorely missing in history courses. American history should be taught not through a confocal lens but rather through a multiplicity of voices.
The duty of an American history curriculum is not to promote American exceptionalism — it is to give a truthful depiction of our past in a way that informs our decisions as citizens in the future. In fact, an attempt by the government to gut out the uncomfortable truths of our history compromises American exceptionalism, if there is any. To be truly exceptional, we must show, not tell. A nation that is able to confront and have a dynamic discussion about mistakes and thorny events in its past is one that is less likely to make those mistakes again.
Fisher and his fellow Republicans, however, treat education as a political football, marrying partisan agenda with classroom study. Granted, this is not a practice exclusive to Republican politicians, but rarely is an agenda so blatantly obvious and potentially harmful.
This is not an incident isolated to Oklahoma; Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas and North Carolina have all proposed anti-APUSH measures as well. Republican opposition to the curriculum transcended the state level when the Republican National Committee, inspired by an open letter from Larry Krieger and activist Jane Robbins, resolved to label the new framework as “radically revisionist.”
This is reflective of a perpetually growing trend of anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party. Republicans are, with more vigor than ever, engaging in a denial campaign — denial of our history, denial of evolution, denial of man’s effect on the climate, denial of vaccine science, to name a few. Misguided rhetoric is not only being spewed by extremely conservative state representatives, but it’s also being touted by 2016 presidential contenders as well. For example, Gov. Scott Walker recently declined to answer questions about evolution at a recent appearance in Britain; Ben Carson, another 2016 favorite, said that the new APUSH curriculum would have most kids “ready to go sign up for ISIS,” and Sen. Rand Paul, in an interview with CNBC, initially praised the development of vaccines, but then went on the make the widely disproven claim that vaccines could be linked to mental disorders in children. These types of comments recklessly spread misinformation and damage the Republican image.
Along with this disavowal of the truth has come a weakening of the party’s moderate voice. In the last two presidential elections, the GOP forced two right-of-center candidates to the far right; and after both defeats, party leaders and figureheads such as Karl Rove cried out that Republicans were unsuccessful because the candidates were not conservative enough. And so the once fringe right-wing of the GOP has become the new mainstream.
Dan Fisher’s proposal has received a considerable amount of backlash since its conception, and Fisher is now scrambling to revise the bill. If the GOP wants self-preservation, it’ll scramble to revise its own platform before the 2016 elections.