We received the following press release sent on behalf of State Representative Gina Johnsen.
Reps. Gina Johnsen and Joseph Fox each introduced bills this week that aim to restore educational sanity to public school curriculum.
House Bills 4284 (Johnsen) and 4672 (Fox) would together require public schools to give proper, fact-based instruction on critical areas of American history – eras that defined our country and shaped its destiny.
These bills come amidst a tide of historical revisionism that has crept into our public schools’ curricula, according to the representatives.
“Narratives such as the 1619 Project categorically shift the focus of instruction about the colonial era away from exploring how the early colonists cultivated societies built on Judeo-Christian ethics and institutions built on democratic ideals,” said Fox, of Fremont. “Instead, these projects and philosophies emphasize that America has somehow been a society built on perpetuating slavery and dismiss the former emphasis on the expansion of freedoms in our constitutional republic.”
At the expense of historical facts, such narratives craft an overly pessimistic portrayal of American History in order to produce a negative attitude among modern Americans about their past, according to Fox. Worse yet, such stories shun patriotism and adopt a posture of indifference or outright hostility at the concept of love of country.
Jointly, these bills strike back against such revisionism and instead advocate for a return to objectivity in our public schools.
“My measure would ensure that history classes give instruction on a wide range of topics if they aren’t already incorporated into the curriculum: all major wars in which the US has engaged, as well as the documents foundational to the country’s political history,” said Johnsen, of Lake Odessa.
Fox’s HB 4672 would require history classes to teach how the operation of the early colonial communities was intimately tied to Christianity, from the reason the colonists immigrated to the construction of their societies based on Christian beliefs and ethics.
“The present state of our nation can be traced back to its conception, when an independent, free nation was simply an idea in the minds of immigrants,” Fox said. “This is an accurate portrayal of American History. These bills continue that enthusiasm by reviewing many of the major identity-shaping wars America has taken part in during the past two hundred and fifty years.”
“These two bills seek to safeguard the truth and restore parental trust in our public school system,” Johnsen said. “School must be a place of instruction and intellectual cultivation, rather than a place of indoctrination following only the latest trend.”
It’s very interesting that the bill that Gina Johansen introduced doesn’t actually mention anything in the press release. Johansen’s bill requires that schools create a curriculum, based on standards, that covers the “core content” which she determines to be information about the Constitution, wars, and the Civil Rights Movement. If Rep. Johansen understood anything about education at all, she would know that this is what schools ALREADY DO. And the standards cover all of those things she claims to be the “core.” This press release (and the bill itself) is purely to fire up the base of people who are convinced that schools are “indoctrinators.” Johansen’s bill can pass or fail, but it would have ZERO impact on what schools are already doing.
Fox’s bill, on the other hand, does toe a line into dangerous territory of indoctrination– into Christianity. Again, if Fox understood our nation’s history and how it is taught in schools, he would understand that teaching that our country is a Christian nation is precisely what the founders would NOT want.
Most likely, these bills will fail. However, even their existence is unacceptable and insulting to educators.
Trying to force religion into schools is wrong.
Revisionism has, indeed, crept into our country’s public schools, our media and our politics, but I doubt all of us see it the way you do. Efforts like the 1619 Project are not revisions; they are aimed at adding a fuller picture of this continent’s history than that which has been told through a very narrow scope. A fuller history of America allows not only the white, Christian perspective but the varied perspectives of those of other races and faiths (and, gasp, the faithless), all of whom played and play a role in this continent’s history from the time it was inhabited by humans. Not only the colonizers have a right and responsibility to recite history; the colonized do as well. All of us who live in this country are the product of those who came before us. Some of these truths are not pretty or flattering, but this is how we learn (or choose not to). Some of our most pressing and dangerous divides today are because we refuse to simply acknowledge realities of so many members of our society. I argue that denial and suppression of the entirety of our history is not “sanity.” Revisionism is the belief that the 1950s were “the good old days” in the US, full stop; while that may be true for some, it most certainly is not true for a large population who helped build this country. Why are some so afraid to let those stories be included?