Common Core has set standards for every academic subject. Lately the Common Core History Standards have come under attack. Critics say that the standards will be used to indoctrinate students with viewpoints from the Left.
Stanley Kurtz says that the new plan will remove the “traditional emphasis on America’s founders and the principles of constitutional government.” This emphasis will be replaced with a progressive “emphasis on race, gender, class, and ethnicity.” That means that most of the founders and framers will be left out unless they are “presented as examples of conflict and identity by class, gender, race, or ethnicity.”
A letter sent to the College Board by American Principles in Action and Concerned Women for America outlines many problems. They say the new standards present “a consistently negative view of American history by highlighting oppressors and exploiters while ignoring the dreamers and innovators who built our country. Instead of striving to build a ‘City upon a Hill,’ as generations of students have been taught, the colonists are portrayed as bigots who developed a rigid racial hierarchy.”
The letter says that the new standards ignore “the heroism and sacrifices of America’s servicemen and women.” The standards make “no mention of the sacrifices America’s Greatest Generation made to rescue much of the world from a long night of Nazi and Japanese tyranny.” Instead, they talk about the internment of Japanese-Americans and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.
The standards are not intended to provide a comprehensive list of people and topics. But the letter notes that many heroes like Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Dwight Eisenhower, Jackie Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have been excluded. But the standards do have space for Chief Little Turtle, the Students for Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers.
Common Core standards in mathematics have come under attack from many quarters. But it is easy to see why the history standards will also face controversy. They seemed to be written to advance a left-leaning view of American history.