Jefferson County student protesters, while long on passion, could use a little help on their facts and reasoning. As an exercise in critical thinking, let me counter some of their assertions with another viewpoint.
“The Declaration of Independence was an act of civil disobedience.” No it wasn’t. It was the precursor to an armed rebellion against the King of England, his appointed officers and his military forces in the American colonies. Absent a constitution protecting the natural rights of the people and establishing a system of representative government, they had no alternative through the democratic process, as we do today.
Acts of civil disobedience come in different varieties and degrees. Some are peaceful, honorable and just. Others are violent, destructive, dishonorable and unjust. The first category includes the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus in Alabama, and sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the deep South. In the second are Klan cross burnings on the lawns of blacks, bombings by Students for a Democratic Society in the ’60s and ’70s, and violent rioting by leftist radicals at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Rather than a blanket glorification of civil disobedience in general, a balanced history curriculum would also expose its excesses.
“The Jeffco school board wants to censor the bad things that have happened in America’s past.” No, it doesn’t. Censorship is about banning something. A comprehensive study of American history is the work of a lifetime. So any course has to be edited to fit available time. The board wants such a course to be balanced in its presentation of the good and the bad. Critics of the College Board’s AP U.S. History curriculum believe it lacks that balance.
Even College Board senior vice president Trevor Packer has conceded, “It’s very difficult, given the dominance of liberal perspectives in college and high school history departments, for faculty committees to avoid unintentionally muting, eliding or obfuscating the perspectives of the right.”
Introspection and self-criticism are good — up to a point. But obsessing on our nation’s transgressions and injustices while diminishing our virtues and achievements isn’t. And that’s been a disturbing trend in college and public school U.S. history instruction in recent years. The Jeffco board wants to restore balance. It’s not arrogating any new authority to itself by questioning AP U.S. History. In fact, its duty to “control instruction” in its schools is specified in the Colorado Constitution.
Picture the iconic statue of Lady Liberty, blindfolded and holding a balance scale. I think the vast majority of Americans rightly believe that a fair assessment of our history would place far more weight on the good side of that scale than the bad, especially when compared to any other major nation that has ever existed. What reasonable person would argue that our children should be taught or indoctrinated to the contrary?
Student protesters take offense at the board’s encouragement of respect for authority. Does that include their parents? Ironically, they seem to respect their teachers’ authority. But if teachers are the source of the students’ misperceptions in this dispute, that authority deserves to be questioned, as does the authority of the College Board to rigidly impose a biased AP U.S. History curriculum.
I doubt very few, if any, students have read the 130-page AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description. (I have.) So why do they assume it’s above criticism? Because their teachers told them so? Let me suggest an extra-credit project for “critically thinking” student protesters: Read the even-handed analysis by Frederick Hess, “10 Thoughts on the New AP U.S. History Curriculum,” for some insights you may not have gotten from your teachers. You can Google it online. Then, maybe, critically think again.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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