By Paula Noonan.
The Rebels — students from Columbine High School — headed to adjacent Clement Park at 10:30am yesterday to protest the Jefferson County (Jeffco), Colorado, school board’s anti-Advanced Placement/US History resolution. The Rebels, the George Washington kind from the American Revolution, got lots of car honks from supportive Jeffco citizens.
Asked whether their teachers “put them up to it,” as claimed by school board President Ken Witt, the students offered a resounding ‘NO.’ Asked whether they feel “heard” by the board, they offered another resounding ‘NO.’ “This is all we’ve been talking about this week,” said a student. “No one told us to do anything.
The kids were kept safe by school administrators who maintained a line at the sidewalk. Parents showed up to support their kids. But the kids led the charge.
The controversy, which started a week ago at a school board meeting, is part of an ongoing fight between the school board’s conservative majority and teachers and many citizens, and now students. Julie Williams, board member from Arvada in north Jefferson County, put up a resolution to “promote patriotism” in the district’s AP US History class. Steph Rossi, an AP history teacher at Jeffco’s Wheatridge High School, wondered whether Williams assumed the classes weren’t patriotic.
Williams objects to the “negative parts” of American history that she and Witt believe are overly emphasized. A little research can alleviate her concern, and might drum up worry from Americans who believe that the history class doesn’t put enough reality into the course.
One of the first suggested subjects offered by the AP College Board for its US history course is the “study of artifacts.” (see pp.9-12) The example artifact is President Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello as an exemplum of “American neo-classical thought.”
The lesson takes students through the Greek and Roman “architectural motifs” that “embody the values of the society and stimulate civic virtue.” It asks students to think about the contrast between “the civic gentleman vis a vis the merchant tradesman.” It cites Jefferson as an example of a “unique American identity.”
No where in this lesson, however, does the discussion address the slave quarters and industrial activity occurring on “Mulberry Road,” about a football field away from the stairs leading up to Jefferson’s Monticello entryway. Presidents James Madison and James Monroe would have seen these quarters often as they climbed the stairs to lunch with Jefferson. Many other influential Virginians and politicians would have similarly gone by the quarters, and certainly dined in front of his slaves.
This omission from the US AP course example comports with Williams’ view that American history classes in eponymously named Jefferson County should accentuate the positive. It feeds the students’ fear they’ll receive the “edited” version of our country’s past.
The best part of the uproar is the student’s commitment to exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble and speech. It may distress Williams and Witt that students are leaving their classes, but as one student sign aptly said, “I’m not ditching school, you’re ditching history.”
Paula Noonan, former member of Jefferson County School Board, owner, Coloradocapitolwatch.com
Michael Paul Goldenberg
So typical of anti-intellectual idiocy in this country. People who never complained when the typical US curriculum was white bread from start to finish are now appalled at the “politicization” of various subjects (it’s the secular humanist hippie Islamist Commie Jew atheists who hate the troops, don’tcha know?) They talk about either a return to ‘core values,’ ‘the basics,’ and other code phrases for US education in the McCarthy Era, when the only narrative allowed in schools was the one in which benevolent, enlightened northern European Christians of the “right” Church brought civilization to the various ignorant colored folks who were either here to begin with or were forcibly brought here as slaves and given the “privilege” of earning fortunes for their masters, or else, if they sense that the damned liberals have finally gotten a little bit of balance into curriculum, call for “teaching the controversy,” and other b.s. phrases that really mean, “We’ll settle for getting our feet back in the door just as long as it takes to figure out how to get rid of Howard Zinn, social justice, and any other viewpoint that doesn’t have us WASPs as the masters of the universe.
Of course, there is craziness on the left as well, and it’s deeply important that education not become indoctrination and propagandizing. As soon as I see someone whose goal is to teach a completely narrow view of complex subjects, my “ideologue” antenna start twitching and I find myself looking for the sales pitch lurking behind the “enlightenment.” Best teacher I had for history was a moderate Republican who was actually committed to teaching a more balanced view of government and history, though he was still a far cry from what we might have if right wing school board members like those in this story would keep their hands out of the classroom and allow real struggle with difficult facts and ideas in public school. Still, Fred Crouter did more to show some of us what it means to challenge received wisdom in history than any other teacher I knew in that era. Would that closed-minded idiots like the board members quoted here learned that lesson. Bravo to the students and teachers and parents standing up to them.
Nicholas Tampio
I love the American tradition of civil disobedience, but there’s another side to this story.
The local school board wanted a say in how history is taught in their schools. The College Board, headed by David Coleman, said they could not “censor” the curriculum and call it AP.
https://twitter.com/alliebidwell/status/515603304404238336
Should American history courses cover the tradition of civil disobedience? I think so. Should one private company hold a virtual monopoly on how American history is taught to college-bound students? No. Local school districts should have a meaningful voice in the curriculum, even if, sometimes, we don’t like what they decide. That’s democracy.
Kimberly Kunst Domangue
Nicholas: I was thinking about whether people truly understood the CCSS involvement in the issue. Complaints that I’ve heard here in Louisiana regarding the CCSS and American History/Literature have been more “Why are we not teaching about the Founding Fathers more? Why are we asking students to take the perspectives of the Native Americans who were here when Europeans began to colonize North America?” Funny how geography dictates how we perceive an issue and its resolution.
Kimberly Kunst Domangue
My daughter’s AP Government class (10th grade) has included debates upon Common Core, same-sex marriage, and legalization of medical marijuana. In that respect, the Common Core has been helpful. For Algebra II, the teachers have been extremely frustrated and the students have not been learning the essentials as well (according to the professional judgement of the teachers).
When I visited Colorado this summer for the NEA RA, I was surprised at how supportive the state seemed to be of its teachers. The governor was hailed as being pro-teacher. There was such a different feel than we have in Louisiana. Upon reflection, one must consider the Explorer archetypes that likely chose to risk the safety of the same to relocate to the American West. Perhaps it is not surprising at all that the students felt so safe to walk-out (with the supervision of administrators, I might add, which would never happen here). The same can be said for the teachers “out West”. In the South, we have continued to battle paradigms as old as patriarchy. Our successes may appear different, we may be less inclined to “toot our own horns”, but people here demonstrate their courage daily – just differently.