Title: Lawmakers Push to Ban '1619 Project' From Schools
Headings: Lawmakers Push to Ban ‘1619 Project’ From Schools
Lawmakers Push to Ban ‘1619 Project’ From Schools
Social studies groups push back
History education should invite debate, not stifle it
Calls on lawmakers to focus on the pandemic
Sarah Schwartz

Content: And they echo proposals by former President Donald Trump, who, in his final few months in office, said he would ban states from teaching the project, accused history educators of teaching children to “hate their own country,” and convened a 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education.” Previous challenges to the 1619 curriculum, from Trump and Cotton, were mostly symbolic, said Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Federal education law prevents the recommendation or banning of specific curricula at the national level. “At the state level, it’s a different ball of wax,” he said, noting that these statehouse challenges could prove more substantive. “ Historically, school curriculum has been determined at the state level.” Whether these bills pass or not, they demonstrate the persistence of backlash to curricula that center Black history and Black stories, said Stephanie P. Jones, an assistant professor of education at Grinnell College. Attempts to gloss over the more challenging parts of the country’s story in schools didn’t start with the Trump presidency, and they won’t end with its conclusion, Jones said. “This type of mishandling of curriculum has been in place since U.S. public schools have been in place,” she said. “ They were not designed to educate Black children, and they were not designed to educate white children to be critical of anything related to the foundations of this country.” Still, for Zimmerman, something about this cultural conversation feels different.