Hundreds of Jefferson county students, teachers and parents took to the streets for a rally to protest the curriculum review committee proposed by the Jefferson County school board in Golden on Oct. 2. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
Re: “What the AP history fight in Jeffco is all about,” Nov. 9 Perspective article.
Charles Lane has it all wrong. Lane argues that the conflict over censorship in the AP U.S. history curriculum is merely a smokescreen for a bigger labor controversy in Jefferson County, dismissing this conflict as only the “predominant media narrative.”
Lane is missing the larger historical context. The U.S. history curriculum has been under attack by right-wing (and occasionally left-wing) ideologues and political activists for two decades. The Jeffco story is the next chapter in a story that includes what I call anti-historians attacking history teaching in places as varied as Texas, Minnesota, Utah and Kentucky. We should not so easily dismiss such attacks on academic integrity.
Fritz Fischer, Niwot
The writer is a professor of history and history education at the University of Northern Colorado.
This letter was published in the Nov. 16 edition.I read Charles Lane’s commentary to find out “What the AP History fight is all about,” as the headline implied. What a disappointment. What a disservice to people engaged in that “fight.”
I learned nothing except that Lane cannot summon the word “teachers” without “union,” a word he used 11 times in 27 ponderously propagandistic column inches.
How could educators, Jefferson County students and parents possibly be concerned about the designs of an ideologically juiced power clique on their school board without being chained at the nose by schemers at the “teachers union”? It appears that in his inquiry, Lane didn’t appear to ask any of them.
If any Post readers still have Lane’s column, I suggest they take out the word “union” at every turn and let it read “teachers,” period. Then see what “the fight is all about” in Jeffco.
John P. Young, Fort Collins
This letter was published in the Nov. 16 edition.
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