Tony Lee, Breitbart, December 23, 2012
Last Thursday, the Minnesota Department of
Education held public hearings to approve its new social studies education
curriculum that leaves out "patriotism" as a civic virtue and teaches
that America's rise as a global power from its agrarian roots led to
"institutionalized racism."
History Standard 20 for the period
1870–1920, in the new social studies/history standards, says:
“The student will understand that as the
United States shifted from its agrarian roots into an industrial and global
power, the rise of big business, urbanization, and immigration led to
institutionalized racism, ethnic and class conflict, and new efforts at
reform.”
John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute, wrote
that "nine years ago a group of history professors from the University of
Minnesota sent a letter to the state’s education department" complaining
that Minnesota's social studies standards "presented American history too
positively."
These academics wanted Minnesota's children
to learn that the story of American "primarily meant slavery for African
Americans, genocide for American Indians, subjugation for women, xenophobia for
immigrants, and exploitation for poor people."
The 2012 standards also include "no
references to 9/11, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the Iraq War, the war in
Afghanistan, the Gulf War of 1991, or terrorism itself."
In addition, the Minnesota education
standards no longer list “patriotism” in the list of “civic values." As
Fonte notes, Loyola University, Baltimore Professor Diana Schaub has described
this deemphasizing of "patriotism" in the schools as “civics without
a country."
