Who cares about the actual truth…
…when you can teach children a higher truth, and especially one that makes them hate the US and its Founders?
The better to delegitimize the Constitution, right?
The NY Times is in the education business:
The NYT has long tried to leave its mark on classrooms both in K-12 and on college campuses. They reach purchase agreements with schools across the country to have their paper distributed to students. They develop curricula based off of their reporting…
But any past controversy surrounding the intersection of corporate media and public education pales in comparison to what the NYT is trying to do with its “1619 Project.” For those who are unfamiliar with the project, the NYT Magazine has an on-going series with the ambitious goal of writing an alternative history of the United States where race and slavery are the central movers in literally every event. The project’s name comes from the paper’s thesis that the “true” birth of the United States did not occur in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, but in 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to the North American continent.
The NYT has partnered with Smithsonian (which is also into woke revisionist history now – Smithsonian Magazine is about as ridiculous as the NYT) and Pulitzer Center Education Resources and Programs to produce a revisionist history curricula for K-12 public schools. Their program has already been implemented in Chicago and other places. So rather than reading books produced by people with an academic background in history, kids are getting materials produced by activist journalists with a explicit political agenda. Your tax dollars at work!
This past week, several prominent historians, including Gordon Wood and James McPherson, wrote a letter to the NYT explaining that what the paper has published under its 1619 Project has included major factual errors and demanded that the paper print corrections. The professors specifically noted that if the paper left the material unchanged, it might be responsible for convincing a generation of school children to believe things about the nation’s history that were demonstrably untrue.
The historians cited, for example, that the NYT now claims that the colonists fought for independence from Britain because they were afraid that Britain would take their slaves away. Gone are the issues of taxation without representation and the like, now the Revolutionary War was fundamentally about slavery.
The NYT claims are laughable on their face for a number of reasons. First, the hyper-literate colonists produced many, many volumes of political philosophy and commentary on why they sought independence. Anyone is a 30-second Google search from hundreds of primary sources on this topic. They don’t suggest that the purpose of the war was “Britain is going to take my slaves away.”
Second, Britain itself had a booming slave trade of its own during the 18th century. It had entire port towns devoted to the sale of slaves. Of the American colonies, those with economies that were becoming increasingly dependent on slave labor contained the most loyalists to the crown…
The professors point out the irony of the NYT claims: In trying to write the history of slavery, the NYT takes the same ideological position as white supremacists, which is that the founding documents of this nation never spoke to racial equality. It is nearly impossible to separate the race-baiting narrative the NYT is publishing from the arguments made by secessionists ahead of and during the Civil War, which is the notion that “all men are created equal” was always intended to apply only to white folk.
The NYT received this criticism exactly as well as you’d think they would. The journalist presiding over the project made comments on social media that the NYT was not interested in the opinions of “white historians,” and that is why they were not consulted for the project to fact-check their work.
The editor of the NYT explained that while the paper does not employ anyone with any serious background in the study of history, he still prefers his journalists’ production over the work of serious historians. History is always changing and being re-visited, he claims, so what he’s doing is morally justified.
How many unsuspecting parents will learn way too late that their children are being subjected to this Orwellian curriculum?
Yes, the MSM and the NY Times have been losing more and more credibility in the eyes of the public. But that doesn’t much matter, if the Times is allowed to succeed in determining the American history curriculum of generations of students. Those in charge of public education seem to be fully on board, too. It’s a joint project.
And of course, it’s not just the Times; the general project of demonizing the US has been going on for several generations already, with “historians” such as Zinn in the forefront.
Another scandal at the Smithsonian. If that’s going to be the deal with the Smithsonian, we’re better off without it.
Speaking of people who don’t care about the actual truth…
I just learned from the always essential Victor Davis Hanson that Rachel Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar. Along with Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Bill Clinton and Susan Rice.
We gotta get ourselves some new elites.
Not to mention the Common Core education initiative (2010) which has succeeded in reducing high school test scores, while making school more of a grind for teachers and students.
Thanks Obama! Thanks Bill Gates!
huxley is exactly correct about Bill Gates supporting Common Core.
Pastor Pete Buttigieg isn’t setting school policy yet, but he did speak in front of a classroom full of kids recently and said, “The people who wrote the Constitution did not understand that slavery was a bad thing.”
Ted Cruz responded on Twitter with 6 counterexample quotes by John Adams, John Jay, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. Check it out here.
Rachel Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar. Along with Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Bill Clinton and Susan Rice.
At one time, you had to demonstrate a love of sports to win one of those. Booker’s the only one I can think of with a record in college athletics.
“…a love of sports…”
Well yes, I believe it’s called “Trumpsticking” (which has been known to be extremely popular with Oxonians and Cantabrigians—that is, when they’re not sloshed).
Moreover, after considerable deliberation on the matter by the nabobs of the Internatonal Olympic Committee, this new and much heralded event—even PETA avidly approves—will be rolled out this summer in Tokyo to replace lawn bowling, which, much to the chagrin of the IOC, has been wracked by doping scandals and, more egregiously, outrageous costumery—so it has been claimed at least by righteously indignant traditionalists. (Besides, Carlos—“the Gecko”—Ghosn is reputed to have been a lawn bowler enthusiast, which pretty much decided the matter for the Japanese “on the spot” as it were.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_hunting#Pigsticking
Re: The Smithsonian.
One example of how they try to twist the truth occurred many years ago, when there was a lot of controversy about the aircraft the Enola Gay, and our dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which, somehow, the Smithsonian exhibit on this subject (which one assumed would be competently done, accurate, and thorough) failed to mention the basic fact that the Japanese had staged a sneak attack against Pearl Harbor resulting, in consequence, in our Declaration of War against Japan.
The implication, for someone who did not know any history, could well be that our dropping of these weapons was actually without any substantial justification, and was perhaps, as well, primarily because of our supposedly inherent “racism.”
Walking through and looking at their exhibits back a couple of decades ago, I noticed that a lot of their explanatory placards on supposedly “controversial” subjects had a decidedly leftist tilt.
Parents should be very wary of enrolling their children in public schools which carry these toxic curricula.
P.P.S.–Where does the Smithsonian get the people who decide on, research, mount, and “curate” their exhibits?
From Leftist dominated Academia.
Sounds like education standards needs to be on the agenda for Trump’s second term.
The Smithsonian Institution.
This is the same organization that attempted to rewrite history and “prove” that Langley’s 70,000 dollar un-fliable pile of spring catapulted junk beat the Wright brothers into the air with a manned flight.
They kept up their charade for some 30 years, even going so far as to have Glenn Curtiss try and rewrite the record by “flying” a modified “aerodrome” in 1914, eleven years after the Wright’s initial achievement, nine or so years after the Wrights had already demonstrated flights of an hour, and six years after Orville’s triumph in France.
Yeah, the Smithsonian … a name you can implicitly trust.
Clinton had experience with sports, but not the sports that would count for a Rhodes Scholar.
A great read.
Clear, unflourished, almost Hemingway-esque English prose.
*The True History of the American Revolution*, by Sydney George Fisher.
An antidote to the New York Times’ lies.
P.P.S.–Where does the Smithsonian get the people who decide on, research, mount, and “curate” their exhibits? From Leftist dominated Academia.
The people who’ve been complaining to the Sulzbergers are academic historians who’ve likely never voted Republican in their lives.
Todays students have been thoroughly brainwashed by the schools. I saw a survey where something like 25% of the students have a favorable opinion of communism. Evidently they are unaware of the communist death toll in the 20th century.
If slavery was so essential to the colonies breaking away from England, why is there no record of any of the founding fathers, even those who owned slaves, saying so?
Cotton pickin’ garbage from the Sulzberger plantation.
Thanks to decades of tax-exemptions & tax supported loans, most colleges have become anti-Rep, anti-Christian indoctrination centers. Students are taught falsehoods as truth, while being taught that truth, itself, is relative, and thus a matter of opinion.
The polarization in America will continue to increase and get worse until colleges have some 20-30% of their professors AND administrators as Republicans or pro-life Christians.
These falsehoods about slavery might have the effect of more Republicans talking honestly against the Democratic Party Jim Crow racist laws, which are much more recent and relevant than early slavery. The prior Dem Jim Crow racism against blacks has changed — now it’s affirmative action racism against whites and, at Harvard at least, also against Asian.
The right cure against racism, which is a form of tribalism, is individualism. Treat every human as a unique person. And judge them on their character.