While Donald Trump’s effort to end the Department of Education is admirable, much else must be done to right the country’s wayward K-12 ship. One glaring issue that needs to be addressed is the ongoing far-left slant of school curricula.
A report by the Goldwater Institute released in late January shows how politically skewed our schools are. The policy organization’s Tyler Bonin states that Marxist Howard Zinn’s work is used in about 25% of American classrooms.
Zinn’s best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States, which is used in conjunction with the online “Zinn Education Project,” misinforms students and borrows from Karl Marx to present American history as a “conflict between capital and labor,” Goldwater discloses.
Zinn maintained that the teaching of history “should serve society in some way” and that “objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable.” When called on the carpet for writing a history book that played very fast and loose with the facts, the author freely admitted it, saying that his hope in writing the book was to create a revolution.
Well, at least Zinn was honest enough to admit he was a liar.
Here are just a few of Zinn’s suppositions: He resents Abraham Lincoln and the people of the northern states during the Civil War for “insufficient opposition to the institution of slavery.” He has “condescension toward those opposed to the spread of communism.” He also maintains a belief that “civil rights reforms have amounted to little more than window dressing amid a backdrop of ongoing, intractable systemic oppression.”
While students may now be experts in Marxist dogma, they are ignorant of real history. In 2024, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) conducted a national survey of college students that delved into their basic knowledge of American history and government, and found that significant numbers of college students graduate without a basic grasp of the nation’s history and political system.
For example, 60% of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress, and 63% could not identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Importantly, these were multiple-choice questions. Hence, students didn’t have to recall John Roberts’ name, only recognize it. A majority of students believe that the Constitution was written in 1776 rather than 1787.
While the above numbers are distressing, they are not surprising, as fewer than 20% of American colleges and universities require a traditional U.S. government or history course to graduate, according to ACTA.
The findings in the ACTA report are hardly unique. The latest Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey, released late last year, found that 35% of Americans could not name all three branches of government.
Additionally, when respondents were asked to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, 74% named freedom of speech, but just 39% knew that freedom of religion is included, 27% called the right to assembly, 29% knew freedom of the press, and a mere 11% mentioned the right to petition the government.
The results of the latest NAEP U.S. history and civics test, taken in 2022, are also telling.
To continue reading, go to https://www.forkidsandcountry.org/blog/the-sandstorm-uncivil-education
