The Battle Over American History and Civics

History and civics lessons have become another area of political conflict in our national politics. This is how Wilfred McClay, History professor at Hillsdale College and Stanley Kurtz, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center describe the state of our nation. While in the past civics and American history may have escaped involvement in the ever-escalating conflict over our self-conception, public education is now at the forefront.

Kurtz and McClay recently appeared on an episode of Faith and Law’s Friday Forum to discuss appropriate conservative responses to the politicization of education. They were interviewed by Emmett McGroarty, a fellow at the Institute on Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America.

McClay, who recently wrote a book on American history entitled “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” began with how poor most American history textbooks are today. 

They are “awful in every way,” said McClay, because “they are too ideologically inflected towards the left, reflecting the composition of the historical profession. There’s just no way of getting around that.” As a result of the current history curriculum being so infected by partisanship, McClay said that many history textbooks have become unintelligible.

In contrast, McClay hopes students will in his own book get a historical perspective that’s longer and larger, but also engaging. The way to do this is to be up front about America’s mistakes, including slavery and Jim Crow, and to also be honest about great things that have come out of America.

Among the essential attributes of the United States is that “we are a land of hope,” McClay describes. Americans know that there will always be problems, but we have the expectation that they will improve over time.

But, that Americans “get our hopes up,” that also means that we will sometimes fall flat. We expect to try and succeed most of the time, but also fail other times. The problem with how history is taught today in America is that it focuses almost entirely on our failures. Students come away from history class believing “absurd” notions like that the United States is the only nation to ever engage in slavery.

Against people who strongly criticize America, McClay said that “You always want to ask [America’s critics], ‘bad compared to what?’ That’s always the clincher question with our history, is that yes we have a flawed history, but it compares very favorably with the history of most other nations.”

McClay added that attributing all of the problems African-Americans face today to slavery is reductionistic. Many of the worst problems afflicting the black community, especially with family formation, began in the 1960s with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Black fatherlessness, in McClay’s view, is a massive problem that we seldom speak about.

While McClay discussed problems with history education, Kurtz discussed civics education, which may be in an even worse state. The Biden Administration’s Department of Education recently released a proposed new rule creating grants in American History and Civics Education programs. It  prioritizes “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives” and praises The New York Times’ 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory promoter Ibram X. Kendi.

Although these projects won’t immediately receive massive funding, if the “Civics Secures Democracy Act” passes there will be six billion dollars across six years paid out for progressive education on history and civics. One example of the problems with this is the inclusion of “Action Civics” as a category of academic activity. Students will receive academic credit for attending political rallies, protests or other events. However, since those deciding which events should and shouldn’t count for credit will likely be political liberals, this will lead to students credited for attending extracurricular indoctrination sessions.

Kurtz also expressed concern that If the “Civics Secures Democracy Act” (CSDA) passes it will be seen as a greenlight to inject as much Critical Race Theory as possible into the public school system. If the act passes it will make available so much money to individual states that there will be a ton of pressure, even on Republican governors, to accept the progressive terms of the grants. At that point, just as the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top grant program, coupled with federal regulations, forced Common Core standards on the nation, CSDA will impose similar federal control over history and civics.

To avoid federal domination of civics, Kurtz has argued for the “Partisanship Out of Civics Act,” a state-level bill that individual states could adopt to avoid unwanted federal influence. If passed, the bill would bar action civics and Critical Race Theory from public school curriculum.