Liberal rewrites of American history have gone too far in Michigan. The proposed history curriculum for Michigan high schools has been sent back by Superintendent Michael Flanagan for rewrites. Flanagan had admitted that the proposed curriculum could be viewed as having a “biased flavor” and that people might see it as “an indoctrination piece.” He went as far as to say, “What we’ve got to get across is we’re not trying to propagandize our kids.”
Mr. Flanagan is not alone in this thinking. State Board President Kathleen Straus told the Detroit News, “I think there’s a lot that we could have put in.”
So what was missing from the curriculum? According to a report by The Grand Rapids Press, the curriculum would have “nothing about America before 1890, leaving the nation’s foundation years, its crucial philosophical groundings and the Civil War to elementary and middle schools.”
From then it only gets worse. “In the post-1890 studies, no mention is to be found of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Same for Henry Ford, Rosa Parks, Andrew Carnegie, Douglas MacArthur and Earl Warren—and Hitler, Stalin and Tojo. Similarly absent: the development of mass production and the rise of industrial unions, D-Day, defeat of fascist Germany and imperial Japan, the Korean War and the toppling of Soviet communism.” The Press also noted, “In a flash of good sense, curriculum writers rejected the lead consultant’s attempt to ban use of ‘America’ and ‘American’ as ‘ethnocentric,’ potentially offensive to the rest of the hemisphere.”
With so much left out, what was to be taught? The Press reported, “The standards do direct study of, for example, the environmental movement, the American Indian protests at Wounded Knee, Rosie the Riveter, the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, acid rain, the automobile’s contribution to global warming, consequences in the Persian Gulf of U.S. energy policy and alternatives to President Truman’s use of the atomic bomb.” It continued by pointing out that much of the curriculum portrayed America as a negative thing in the world.
The school board and Mr. Flanagan did not plan for such drastic revisions to be made when they called for the strengthening of the history curriculum in high schools.
At this time, there is no word on when a revised copy of the proposed curriculum will be presented.
Matthew Murphy is an intern at Accuracy in Academia.
