Education is valued in most cultures and societies around the world and
although every subject is important for a well-rounded education,
history is particularly important as both a deterrent against making bad
choices and a benefit of knowing what is successful. Republicans are
opposed to an educated populace as a means of sustaining their ignorant
electoral base and one particular subject has evoked outrage among wingnuts because it is impossible to deny.
Just about one year ago, an 'educated' Republican
candidate for pretender, Ben Carson, lashed out
at one high school curriculum subject and
stated categorically that “
most people who take the course would be ready to sign up for ISIL.”
On first blush one would imagine some islamic extremists had
infiltrated a public school district and changed it into a muslim
madrassa specializing in terrorism to annihilate America and wipe any
memory of the nation off the face of the Earth; but that would be false.
In fact, it is Carson and Republicans who want to
wipe out any memory, or knowledge, of the nation’s history that does not
advance the Koch, evangelical, and Republican vision of and for
America. Sadly, wingnuts were very successful in pressuring the
non-profit, non-partisan College Board to revise American history
standards to fit Republican and social wingnuts’ version of this
country’s history. The College Board’s acquiescence to wingnuts will serve the Republicans’ purpose of keeping yet
another generation of Americans uninformed and indoctrinated in the wingnut version of American history no matter how obscenely
false and incomplete it is.
Last year when the College Board released its
guidelines for AP (advanced placement) history courses for high school
students, wingnuts were apoplectic that the standards did not
include high praise and endorsement of Republican standards; what they
concluded was that AP history classes were despicably unpatriotic. That
is why Carson claimed that most high school AP students would be “
ready to sign up for ISIL”
after the horror of learning about America’s history as it really
happened. Since, like most organizations in America, the College Board
is terrified of standing up to wingnuts, the
new
AP standards, which are effective immediately, will more frequently use
and heavily promote that religio-wingnut phrase, “
American exceptionalism;”
Republicans consider those two words more important than anything jesus christ, dog almighty, or the Founding Fathers ever said. The wingnuts also pressured the College Board to place much more
emphasis on the phrase “founding fathers;” a subject the College Board
said it “assumed wasn’t something it needed to spell out as part of what
would be taught in an American history course.”
Wingnuts leveled mountains of criticism at the
College Board’s AP guidelines including; there was not nearly enough
emphasis on, or repetition of, the term founding fathers; there was too
much emphasis on slavery; there was too accurate an accounting of
violence against Native Americans, and there was not nearly enough focus
on the blessing of the wingnut’s influence in creating and
sustaining “exceptionalism of America.” The wingnuts also had a
serious problem that there was insufficient time spent on the four-year
period of World War II, so the College Board caved and set new standards
that focus on, and devote more time to, America’s greatest military
victories.
The new standards will hardly mention the nation’s
history of slavery because even though the issue nearly tore the nation
in two, it pales in comparison to the important role wingnuttery
had in establishing “American exceptionalism.” Wingnuts reserved
extra criticism for the AP history standards that included any mention
of, or contributions by, women, African-Americans and immigrants;
American exceptionalism is borne of its white male European roots.
One area that wingnuts took particular issue with was the framework’s description of the term “manifest destiny.” The concept of Manifest Destiny historically asserts
that the United States military power in the Western hemisphere
justified its imperialism and expansion, and was based on a belief in
white racial superiority. That still existing sense of American cultural
superiority that shaped the era’s political debates and warmongering
policy still drives the wingnut movement’s foreign policy around
the world and subjection of minorities domestically.
The issue of revising American history according to wingnuts’ imagination began when a retired history teacher
(seriously), Larry Krieger, took issue with everything in the AP history
standards that did not adhere to the wingnuts’ revisionist take
on American history. The republican national coven were alerted to
Krieger’s opposition to factual American history and began applying
heavy pressure on Congress to abolish the College Board. Republicans
were livid because the College Board’s AP history standards held fast to
actual historical events that Republicans still claim “omitted
America’s positive aspects” and did not portray America as exceptional.
Republicans demanded eliminating any mention of slavery, Jim Crow laws,
slaughter of Native Americans, Japanese internment camps, segregation,
and the struggle for Civil Rights that contradict the wingnut claim that America is and always has been exceptional among
nations.
Once the rnc was officially invested in revising
American history as a platform and major wingnut goal, the College
Board and AP classes became a prime target of “
Republican patriots”
in state legislatures. For example, in Oklahoma a legislative committee
voted to ban AP history classes and Oklahoma moron Dan Fisher
(R)
introduced legislation that “
prohibited the expenditure of funds on the Advanced Placement United States History course.”
The Jefferson City County school board In Colorado created a “special
committee” to review and revise the AP history course until student
protests against wingnut revisionism garnered national media
attention that pressured the school board to
cancel the review and revision of the standards.
Part of the reason wingnuts have been on a tear
to abolish AP history classes besides they teach America’s history,
good and bad alike, is because the head of the College Board setting the
AP standards had a hand in developing the Common Core standards.
Remember, Common Core was an effort to “standardize” curriculum across
the nation so red state students would not be mentally handicapped and
frankly, stupid compared to their counterparts in states devoted to
educating their children. In Republican states across the South, there
is a concerted effort to use the christian bible as science curriculum; religio-wingnuts already claim the bible was the model the Framers
used to write the Constitution; including crucial input from biblical
Moses. In fact, Texas just changed its academic guidelines for history
to focus on the experiences of successful white, landowning, religious
men and omit any mention of Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, or
suppression of people of color because Republicans actively repeating
that abominable era have to appear groundbreaking and not repetitive.
There
is a famous quote from George Santayana in The Life of Reason that
says, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
It explains exactly why Republicans, and particularly Lunatic fringe wingnuts, want high school students to remain ignorant of the
nation’s history that Republicans are intent on perpetuating, not
repeating regardless the detriment to the nation or its people. The
events of the past four years should be evidence enough for most
Americans to comprehend that Republicans deliberately repeat past
failures and to make matters worse, it is not because they “cannot
remember their past” debacles or how devastating to the nation and the
people their actions were, they just do not care. What Republicans care
most about is having a new generation ignorant of the nation’s past
mistakes so they can repeat them; it is what makes America exceptional.
