The Mars (PA) School District amended its home page to proclaim, “quality education should promote students to be informed, engaged, and patriotic citizens.” And then they passed the “Patriot Amendment” — which is the antithesis of “informed”.
This simplistically name amendment is a reaction to the non-existent threat of schools teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is non-existent because schools do not teach CRT. Any more than they teach interactionism or postmodernism. These are all social theories introduced to college undergraduates in philosophy and sociology classes. They are not history curricula.
Further muddying the waters, the board also prohibits teaching ‘social theories’ including Holocaust denial, 9/11 theory, and the New York Times’s 1619 project. That is absurd. Holocaust deniers & 9/11 skeptics are lunatics from the fringe. Whereas the NY Times ‘1619 project’ although controversial, is mainstream, and justifiably part of the conversation.
Anyway, the Mars school district, bowing to a manufactured conservative controversy, passed the measure that banned teachers from, “the teaching of concepts that assign fault, blame, or guilt to people solely because of race, sex, and religion.” It is quite clever in a way. CRT is a theory that explores the reach of systemic racism in American history and jurisprudence — and how it is baked into America’s cake. But by throwing in bans based on sex and religion, the board can pretend it was not CRT that caused this blow to academic freedom. Despite it being the right’s latest cri de guerre.
That being said, the relevant question is, how do you teach American history without reference to race — or sex and religion?
Let us start with the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessey vs Ferguson decision. Called by some ‘SCOTUS’s worst decision’, it created the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine. Who was separate but equal? What was the determinant that divided the population? I suppose you could stay within the letter of the school board's amendment if you claimed that the ‘separate’ was determined by race and something else — but what would the ‘something else’ have been?
While the racists try to come up with a solution to that conundrum, let us consider the granddaddy of all race-based bigotry, the Constitution's infamous 3/5ths compromise. Besides the overt exercise in mathematical racism, it highlights that classes of people in the US could not vote. In this case, slaves. Who happened to be 100% Black — was that a coincidence?
The law also barred women from voting. How does a teacher avoid talking about the sex of the non-voter without contravening the ‘patriot amendment’. The Constitution’s 19th amendment, in extending the franchise to women, says plainly, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”. How can you ignore ‘sex’? It’s right there in the text.
As for religion, how does the teacher explain the explicit antipathy of the 1850s ‘Know Nothing’ Party to Catholics and Jews? In 1928, New York Governor Al Smith was the first Catholic presidential candidate. He lost in a landslide, defeated as reporter Frederick William Wile observed by "the three Ps: Prohibition, Prejudice, and Prosperity". Do history teachers in the Mars School district have to make it “two Ps”
As for antisemitism, should the history curriculum ignore a 1938 poll revealing 60% of Americans held a low opinion of Jews, labeling them "greedy," "dishonest," and "pushy”? How would the curriculum address Father Coughlin, a Priest with a radio audience in the 1930s of 5-10 million? This antisemite blamed Jewish bankers for the Great Depression and the Russian Revolution. Antisemitism in the US was so overt, the 1947 movie “Gentleman’s Agreement”, which shone a bright light on that vile bigotry, won the Best Picture Oscar. I bet the conservatives of that era were already slamming “liberal Hollywood elites”.
But back to race. Let us imagine that the teacher has somehow managed to honor the amendment’s intention while teaching a course covering slavery, a civil war to protect it, Jim Crow, the KKK, lynchings, et al. — how does this teacher explain Brown vs. the Board of Education? In the 1954 decision, the new Chief Justice Earl Warren explained, “in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal”. Who was being segregated?
Next up, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. How do the teachers explain the need for civil rights legislation if they cannot talk about race, sex, and religion?
The protagonist of George Orwell’s '1984', the most iconic book on the minutiae of tyranny, is employed to execute Oceania's version of the patriot amendment. Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to scrub the past of the politically inconvenient. Mao’s Cultural Revolution went further and exterminated academia in communist China. But most recognizable to the bigots behind the perversion of American history would be the Nazi school system’s curriculum extolling the contributions of the master (Aryan, white) race while excising any mention of Jewish contributions to Germany’s history and culture.
And finally, let us address this “patriot” bullshit. “Patriotism is not controversial. Period,” said Dayle Ferguson, the board member who introduced the proposal. It should not be. But when it is mandatory, when it is rammed down kid’s throats, then it becomes a hallmark of autocracy. If you want to debase patriotism, put a flag in every classroom and make students rote recite the pledge of allegiance every day.
If you are so ashamed of your nation’s history, you are too embarrassed to teach it, you are worshipping a false idol. “My country, right or wrong” is not ‘patriotism’, it is ‘nationalism’. A patriot’s love for country is like a good parent’s love for a child. The good parent wants their child to be the best they can be. Which includes addressing errors and weaknesses — and correcting them. Not pretending they do not exist.
A country that whitewashes its history has no claim on greatness.