Patriotic Education: A Distortion of American History

Photo by Danslafrique is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

On September 17, President Donald Trump announced he would create the “1776 Commission” to promote “patriotic education” and “pro-America” curriculum in schools. This move comes on the heels of efforts in schools to teach American history in a way that more fully acknowledges slavery and systemic racism. The announcement has been lauded by conservatives who feel that schools and academia have been pushing a liberal educational agenda for years. Moreover, they insist that the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer have forced a false narrative of systemic racism in America into the minds of young people. However, manipulating American history in order to make students feel “patriotic” is not only a disservice but also inherently nationalistic. It relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of the true purpose of an education in history: fostering informed citizens capable of critical thinking. Centrally, the push for “patriotic education” represents a disturbing effort to silence the struggles of marginalized groups whose narratives were only beginning to be included in the story of America. 

Standing in the National Archives on Constitution Day, Trump declared that “Our youth will be taught to love America” and that "American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture and values in the public square." He expanded on the “indoctrination” to include "Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history,” which, to him, is “toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country." Critical race theory proposes that white supremacy is enshrined and upheld in the law. The notion of race itself is socially constructed and utilized by white people to maintain economic and political power over people of color. The 1619 Project is an initiative from the New York Times Magazine which aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the United States'] national narrative.” Critical race theory and the 1619 Project have picked up popularity since the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery sparked months-long nationwide protests and a national effort to confront police brutality and racism. The president painting initiatives that place the oppression of Black people at the center of the destruction of the country is blatantly indicative of his own racism and the disturbing intentions of this action.

Trump and conservatives view the aforementioned efforts as an assault on the American foundations: the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the “American Dream.” Specifically, Trump included “teach American Exceptionalism” as part of his second-term agenda. American exceptionalism refers to the idea that America’s history is fundamentally different from the history of other nations because it was founded on ideals of republicanism, individualism, equality, and laissez-faire economics. Trump does not want a nuanced view of the Founders, who simultaneously produced the Constitution and perpetuated a system of human bondage. He does not see value in the struggles of groups, like women and people of color, who had to fight to gain the rights listed in the Constitution only given to propertied white men. The education he denotes as “indoctrination” acknowledges the hypocrisy of the Founders upholding brutal systems of patriarchy, racism, and economic inequality while also writing that “all men are created equal.” Additionally, it is difficult to reconcile the facts that Black Americans’ wealth is 9% that of whites and that poor Black children are twice as likely as poor white children to remain impoverished as adults with the “dream” that a person rises to the top through hard work alone. His American exceptionalism makes no room for the acknowledgement of our country’s initial and current systemic flaws.

Trump’s education proposal is an extreme disservice to students across the country. “Patriotic education” based on the legal contributions of the Founders and American exceptionalism silences the stories of people of color, women, and the working class because it builds upon an imagined history that America was egalitarian and representative from the start. This initiative encourages students to be proud of the liberties in the Bill of Rights but makes no mention of those denied them for centuries. It leaves no room for the story of progress because it excludes the history of oppression. 

In truth, if there is anything students should be informed and proud of, it should be the lifelong battles that people fought and continue to fight so that they might be free and equal citizens of a progressing country. The 1619 Project and the like exist so that traditionally powerless groups know that their stories represent some of the greatest triumphs in American history. However, Senator Tom Cotton proposed a bill limiting federal funding for schools that include the project in their curricula. Denying students access to the history of oppression erases the truly horrific parts of America’s past and aggrandizes a white-washed version of history devoid of any nuance or intersectionality. This would push students to a notion that there is nothing systemically wrong in America by relying on a premise of America’s fundamental goodness, negating the act of protest. 

Fundamentally, the Trump Administration’s education initiative distorts the purpose of studying history. Students should learn history to understand the causes and effects of events from many perspectives. Multi-dimensional learning allows students to make their own conclusions and argue with each other, producing individualistic citizens. Under this initiative, students would not learn how to be patriotic, they would learn how to be nationalists. Trump embraced the title of nationalist and believes in “America first.” An education based on the myth of American exceptionalism, the primacy of American interests, and denunciation of global interdependence is, definitively, a nationalistic one. These characteristics are reminiscent of the nationalism and isolationism in the first half of the 20th century, which enabled the rise of fascism in Europe. In fact, the phrases “Trump Youth” and “Hitler Youth” trended on Twitter following the speech, as people likened the initiative to the Nazi’s indoctrination of German youth. There is nothing patriotic about alienating students from the rest of the world and having a true love of country cannot exist on a distorted account of American history. Rather, it is dangerous for a president to plan on misleading the country’s students in order to discount protest and score political points.

School curricula make intersectional additions in an effort to include the stories of Black people, women, and the working class as integral parts of the national story. A student loses much to be patriotic about if he or she is not told the stories of those groups’ fights for progress to deny the legacy of their oppression. It is not unpatriotic to criticize your own country, in fact it displays that you care about it enough to recognize its flaws and want to improve it. Teaching a comprehensive history curriculum creates well-rounded and critical students that become active citizens of a democracy predicated on diversity of thought.