US families are outraged by the new school program. Politicians fear that teachers are indoctrinating pupils with a revisionist and anti-American history. Progressives, on the other hand, argue that this new version of the programs reflects an American reality that should not be hidden from children. The two sides clash in school meetings, teachers are under attack. At stake is the debate on the critical theory of race being explained in the classroom.
The critical theory of race (critical race theory, Crt in the English acronym), the current battleground, was born in the seventies as a legal approach that emphasized the role of systemic (rather than individual) racism in reproducing inequality. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think-tank that seeks to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in schools, defines this set of ideas as follows: a “perspective according to which all events and ideas around us are to be explained in terms of racial identities “. Complicating the debate is the fact that some conservatives use the term to encompass everything from discussions of institutional racism to diversity education.
According to the EdWeek organization, twenty-six states have introduced measures that would limit the dissemination of critical race theory in public schools. Federal lawmakers are also upping the ante. Seven Republican senators, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, relaunched the Saving American History Act in June to limit federal funding to schools using programs derived from the 1619 Project, a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning essays published by New York Times that put slavery at the heart of the nation’s foundation and development (and which have received mixed reviews from historians). The federal bill, first introduced in July 2020, is mostly symbolic: Congress has little control over state and local school curricula, and the proposal is unlikely to be passed with a senate and majority chamber. democrats. But the political line is clear. Republicans believe that waging war on critical race theory is good policy, even if attempting to ban it may prove unconstitutional.
The Tennesse law, signed in May by the governor, prohibits public schools from teaching concepts that promote “embarrassment, guilt, anxiety or other forms of psychological distress.” Texas law expressly censors the 1619 Project, prohibits teachers from giving school credit to anyone who “promotes public or social policies”, prohibits compulsory training “that divulges any form of racial or gender stereotypes or blame on the basis of race or sex ”, and limits the teachings in which“ slavery and racism are not simply considered a deviation, betrayal or failure to fulfill basic United States principles ”. Idaho legislation prohibits any public institution, including colleges, from “forcing students to affirm, adopt or follow” the concept that “individuals are inherently accountable for past actions.” In May, the Idaho deputy governor set up a taskforce “to protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism and Marxism.”
It is not clear to what extent the theory described by liberals and conservatives is taught in classrooms. According to the Heritage Foundation, another conservative think-tank, 43 percent of teachers are familiar with critical race theory, and only 30 percent of this group frowns upon it (about one in ten overall). Nonetheless, the National Education Association, the largest US trade union, recently released a statement in which it espouses the theory.
The ongoing battle over how national history should be told may seem new, but it is part of a century-old confrontation that began in 1918, when education became compulsory in all states. In the 1920s, historian David Muzzey was labeled a traitor for his textbook An american history (An American story), which according to his detractors damaged the American spirit with pro-British distortions of the revolution and war of 1812. Historian Gary Nash, an opponent of Muzzey’s text, claimed that after reading it, American children would sang God save the king, rather than Yankee doodle dandy, the American patriotic song linked to the War of Independence and the Civil War.
To each his own textbook
More controversy followed. In the 1930s, Harold Rugg, a professor of education, was accused by conservatives of “Sovietizing our children”. Detractors argued that his textbook focused on the social problems of the United States and spread the Marxist ideology. The McCarthy era gave the impetus to inquiries into teachers considered Communist sympathizers. In the 1970s, textbook wars sparked violence in West Virgina, where demonstrators threw bombs at schools and injured journalists for books that had controversial multicultural content. Even the liberals have tried to censor some works. In the 1980s, ED Hirsch, a professor and literary critic, published a list of general knowledge items for US children that became a New York Times bestseller. Liberal critics accused Hirsh of placing greater emphasis on the achievements of white men and a Western European perspective.
Perhaps the closest confrontation to the latter is the one that occurred in the 1990s in relation to voluntary national standards for learning history. The elective programs, originally conceived under the George HW Bush administration and then carried on with Bill Clinton, were cut short by the conservatives. Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is running for the presidential elections, spelled out her opposition in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “The End of History.” Lynne Cheney accused the standards of being “politically correct” and lamented the lack of representation of white males in the show: Ulysses S. Grant was mentioned only once, Robert E. Lee not once, while Harriet Tubman was mentioned six times. The Senate passed a dissenting resolution against voluntary standards, burying the program.
“These attacks are always tied to what is happening in the politics of a given period,” says Nash, who helped create the voluntary national standards. The Understanding America Study, a nationwide statistical survey from the University of Southern California, revealed that Americans are united on the importance of civics for children. With slight partisan differences, the majority of parents agree that it is important for children to learn about government (85 percent) and voting requirements (79 percent).
But political differences emerge when it comes to who should appear most prominently in history lessons. Parents’ opinions differ on the importance of learning about women (87 percent of Democrat parents are in favor, versus 66 percent of Republican parents) and non-whites (83 percent versus 60 percent). hundred). A majority of Democratic parents find it important for students to delve into the issues of racism (88 percent) and economic inequality (84 percent), compared to less than half of Republican parents (45 percent and 37 percent, respectively).
Conservatives tend to argue that students must learn a unified and optimistic version of American history, and that learning about specific groups is divisive. “Critical race theory is destructive because it promotes racial discrimination through affinity categorizations, racial guilt based on one’s ethnicity and not one’s behavior, and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our freedom is based,” explains Matt Beienburg of Goldwater Institute. Instead, liberals are willing to accept a more fragmented and less flattering version of the country’s past.
This is the vision that seems to be spreading the most. Also there History of the American people by Howard Zinn (told from the perspective of women and ethnic minorities) is included in the debate on the critical theory of race by the Goldwater Institute: since 1980 it has sold two million copies. The 1619 Project is taught in many school districts, including Chicago. According to the National Education Association, nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws or policies establishing multicultural history or ethnic studies programs.
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization, urges liberal Americans to take conservative fears seriously, or the risk could be that of a “frightening” rise in nationalism. far right. “As the polarization worsens and confidence wanes, it will intensify,” he says. If every war for history becomes more heated than the previous ones, he adds, “where will we end up in ten or twenty years?”.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)
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