When the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, some Eastern European nations, including Ukraine, dropped the Russian curriculum with its view of history and literature. They were eager to return to being a people with their own history, not defined by Russian ideology. They even sang the old-but-not-forgotten songs of their long-occupied nation. After the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas, it was not surprising that official Russian history and curriculum returned to those areas in the Russian language.
In India, President Modi and his BJP party are working to ensure that all of India is regarded as a purely Hindu land. That means that the invasion of the Mughal emperors and others, including Muslims, has been erased, leaving India’s 200 million Muslims as aliens without any historic roots in India. Even Gandhi’s steadfast work to unite Hindus and Muslims has been eliminated along with the death of over 1000 mostly Muslims in 2002 at the hands of “Hindu lynch mobs” (Economist April 15, 2023. P34). Unlike many nations today, Modi is trying to erase diversity rather than demonstrate a growing appreciation of it.
In China, every decade or so, there is an education campaign to ensure conformity among the Communist Party’s 97 million members. With the recent further elevation of President Xi and his firm hand on the nation, this decade’s educational requirement deals with learning President Xi’s way of thinking. (Economist 4-15-23 p35). In 2020, China banned foreign textbooks and other books that ‘damaged societal stability.’ (8-17-23 p45).
Sanitized and politicized history is also known in the United States. For a land based on the voluntary coming together of people from many diverse nations, we were not ready to do much more than acknowledge slavery. We declared equality but struggled mightily over our 250 years. Marginalizing Black history has proven to be inaccurate, misleading, unfortunate, and alienating to the Black 14% of our population. This is wrong.
After the multiple American troubles of 2020, a largely sincere effort to tell the American story better has appeared. That important effort was sidetracked in two notable ways. First, sadly, there was a preference for the sanitized history. Remarkable progress does not mean we do not have a long way to go. Second, a politicized history (new in 2019) created a new narrative with many worthy examples from facts, but with two serious errors: overreach and over-reliance on almost universally discredited economic ideas.
Two observations: First, the 1619 Project, written by Nobel Prize-winning Nikole Hannah-Jones, was introduced and sponsored by the New York Times. This suggests to some and confirms to others that whatever strand of Black initiative may be in play in America, it is only the strand that is approved by the white elite that is sanctioned. Justice Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice are of a strand disapproved by the Times and others.
Second, there is an outcry in America’s public school districts against a substantial shift in curriculum focus. Parents cite changes, especially in history and literature, stating they are noticeably politicized. These parents are routinely told that the curriculum is the sole business of the school board or the state. “Just leave the curriculum us.” However, the experiences of Ukraine, India, China, and Russia suggest that school curricula are very important to those in charge. Some American parents have always sought alternatives; maybe more so now.
Education was important to the founders, from Madison to Lincoln and Roosevelt, who all commented on the need for educated citizens (“No Republic without citizens and no citizens without the Republic”) and the need to shape the “…principles, morals, and manners of our citizens to our Republican forms of government.” (Ben Franklin). Where was this formation of citizens with character to take place? Increasingly in the public schools as they spread slowly from New England. Lincoln struggled with the obvious inequalities among people and still chose to prefer the important natural rights of equality. Friction has arisen when secondary issues or traditions were confused with essentials. Teddy Roosevelt warned in 1910, “When once loyalty to a class had been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand.” (Citizens of The Republic speech, Paris, Aug 23, 1910).
But what are our essentials today? Ideologues insist on teaching their own views, which they consider perfectly normal, while any alternative view is rejected without any possible consideration for such misinformation. So much for pluralism. We will either have education based on common assumptions about the civic purpose and character of citizens of America (and even of humanity itself) or we will polarize further with dramatic flight from the public schools which are, after all, a mere abstraction to the elites who left long ago.