By a vote of 3-2, the school board of Jefferson County, Colorado, passed its controversial proposal to adopt an American history curriculum that removes references to dissent and social disorder and anything else that diminishes a sense of patriotism. This idea was cooked up by a radical rightwing majority that took control of the board at the last election.
The meeting was noisy and fractious. Students turned out in large numbers to oppose the sanitized curriculum, and by their actions, showed that dissent is alive and well.
Luckily, there is a website devoted to watching the JeffCo school board. The Jeffcoschoolboardwatch says the word of the day now is: Recall!
The students have gained national and international attention. The school board majority and its allies say they are “pawns” of the teachers’ union. Fox News called them “punks.”
Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College in California, proposes that the major historical associations honor these students for demanding a history curriculum that is not saddled with ideological bias. They have stood up for academic freedom.
I call them heroes. Students cannot be fired. They can stand up for their right to learn and for their teachers’ right to teach. Teachers and principals can’t do that. Student protests can awaken the public. They can alert the people of JeffCo and Colorado about radical efforts to remove controversy from the teaching of U.S. history. They can save our schools from the reactionaries who want to hand them over to Walton-funded, Broad-funded, Gates-funded, NewSchools Venture-funded profiteers. They can stop data-mining.
Their voices cannot be stilled by threats and intimidation. They have the idealism of youth and the freedom to act and speak without fear. Go, students of JeffCo!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Jefferson County kids are “pawns of the teachers union”, eh?
What does that make Eva’s kids?
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As a Righty Red Royalist, I’m glad they’re finally deleting all that unBritish Ballyhoo about The Unpleasantness of 1776.
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Precisely! Dissent is not patriotic! Tell Ben Franklin, Tom Jefferson….
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Maybe when those Foundering Fussbudgets are finally consigned to the historical oblivion they so richly deserve, the Tea-Dunkin Loyalists of History Rewriting 101 can rename Jefferson County to King George III County.
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John Awbrey, I believe there already is a King George county in Virginia, and a Prince George’s county in Maryland, where I grew up. At least they have colonial-era origins. Perhaps we can rename Jeffco (my home now) to “Koch County.”
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Y’all have it wrong…
The Tea Party would have no trouble with him if he had been CEO George Jr. Jr. rather than King George III.
Remember, you can chop off the head of a king but never even think of biting the corporate hand that feeds you…
😳
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Really sad day for education. Our basic freedoms, except for the right to bear arms, are being eroded. Revisionist history at its worst!!
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I can’t tell you how many anti common core people I have heard from after posting the two NYT ARTICLES who believe wholeheartedly the words of FOX, Breitbart, and the allies of reactionism.. They forget when all US HISTORY textbooks were “written” by the Texas state school board.
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In addition: APUS is not a school curriculum…It is a national curriculum designed by the College Board. If you offer APUS you don’t even have to follow it, unless of course you cherish the results of AP exams, and even then you can coach kids for the test. I taught APUS for years…Much to do about nothing.
APUS is an elective course students choose to take to get Advanced Placement in universities. It is taken only by a relatively few students in any school.
I agree that any top down manipulation of what a college course should look like is bad. I refused to teach it any more when it became more about training to get high grades on the AP exam rather than what it was prior… an opportunity to teach kids how to learn on a college level.
In every APUS class I ever taught, the fun was having the students debate and discuss how they interpreted why things happened historically.
To my knowledge, the students in Jeff Co were protesting the imposition of a censored view of history…
All BOEs must approve new courses and curricula. If they decide to offer Advanced Placement classes (and of course they do because of the prestige and high rankings given their schools) , they have to approve the college board created curricula.
In my last HS we decided 6 years ago) no longer to offer AP courses in all subjects because we (the teachers of those courses) thought they were terrible. We now offer Advanced topics courses with district (i.e. the teachers of the courses) developed curricula, approved by the BOE.
That should be the model.
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I’ve got a book for the Jeffco school board, it’s called Flyboys by James Bradley. In it he tells the story Chichi Jima, the rescue of George HW Bush from the ocean, and the brutality of the Japanese to those who were captured.
Also, Mr. Bradley illustrates that the Americans did the same thing during the Spanish American war, and barbaric acts after the Sand Creek Massacre near Denver.
A must read for all Jeffco students.
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Thank you for covering the happenings here in Jeffco. The students made us all proud at the Jeffco Board meeting. Several groups of them gave passionate, articulate public comment. They have led their own protests and they are organizing to hold more. The next one is scheduled for Sat. 10/11 at Clement Park, from noon to 3 pm. We will keep up the fight. We are Jeffco.
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Thank you for covering the events here in Jeffco, CO. We are very proud of our high school leaders. Several groups of students gave very passionate and compelling public comment during the Board meeting on Thursday. Sadly, the Board majority do not care what the kids or community want. They have their own agenda. But we will not be deterred. Students are planning a district-wide rally on Sat. 10/11 from noon to 3 pm at Clement Park. No pawns here.
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Wouldn’t any high school teacher (or the union) like to have more “pawns” in his/her classroom? It would eliminate any discipline problems, late work…
Can’t recall a less likely claim about teenagers…
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If any of you want to learn about what happened to the Hawaiian Kingdom, go to You Tube and google: Hawai’i’s Last Queen. What occured is reprehensible..and FOR PROFITS. Obama went to Punahou, the private school founded by the rich missionaries who raped the islands. Notice what they did when the Hawaiian flag was taken down and the American flag raised. OY…such arrogance.
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This isn’t exactly what happened at the last Board meeting. They passed a motion (3-2) to allow the formation of a new curriculum review committee that will report directly to the school board. APUSH and the Health curriculum are two areas targeted for review. Students, parents, and teachers understand that it is an attempt to promote a more conservative (Tea Party inspired) viewpoint. Majority school board member, Williams, put forth an earlier motion and the wording can be traced right back to a Texas House Bill from several years ago. Also, the original wording would have given the Board power to approve or vote down member selection, resulting in the Board majority rubber stamping their picks. All the protests were effective in that the new proposed committee will include students, teachers and curriculum specialists, as well as 2 reps that are appointed by each board member. Small victory….if you can call it that…
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The Boston Tea Party was about dissent, so what will these crazy Tea Party puppets call themselves now?
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Excuse me, the “crazy Tea Party puppets”? Taxed Enough Already (TEA) is the opposite of puppetry.
The TEA Party would be opposed to silencing Patriotism, which is what this is part of…and is not reported here.
This isn’t about students not being allowed to “dissent”..that issue is silly…look at the kids…are they freely “dissenting”? YES!
Is the TEA party out there stopping them? NO! Get real.
The media presenting this Student “protesting” as being initiating from them is so dishonest….it’s financed by Move-on and probably more progressive community organizing …what do they hope to gain? More power? yeah…that’s what it’s about…so dishonest!
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Quoted and Cross-posted as a link in a comment that I made on the quickenink to NY Times piece “After Uproar, School Board in Colorado Scraps Anti-Protest Curriculum”
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All the Board is talking about is a Review of the Curriculum…and all hell breaks loose…What is there to hide? When I went to college and had to sit and listen to how horrible whites are ..their white Privilege and couldn’t “protest” that…how terrible America was to the Japanese for interning them…and I brought up the fact, there was a war…and they did bomb Pearl Harbor…” boy did I get silenced! “We’re not talking about THAT!” of course not. the entire history led to, for no reason at all, White American’s just killed people, took land, and now enslaved people…no mention of Arab slave traders…that was Taboo…and now it’s just so Precious to Speak Out! Really? How skewed is that! How biased and bigoted is that! Only when White America is not being bashed do you protest! Nice balanced teaching! NOT!
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Please, keep commenting. You are demonstrating perfectly the set of hatreds that propel your world view. A very valuable public service.
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I wrote to the school board, not to take a position on the underlying substantive matter, but to reveal that a number of the supporters of APUSH also support inappropriate material in schools, pronography generally, and at least one Hamas organization in America. One, the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, which is also a cosponsor of Banned Books Week, wrote during BBW that schools removing books with extremely graphic s3xual descriptions is “censorship.” Now she was in Colorado essentially crying “censorship” again.
I hope my letter helped the school board learn about some of those supporting APUSH.
If anyone is interested, see:
“American Values are ‘Deeply Problematic’ for the National Coalition Against Censorship; NCAC Prefers the Ghostwritten Advanced Placement US History Framework for Schools”
http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2014/10/apush.html
I also note MoveOn organizing and funding the students does not lead me to believe these are “student protests” any more than paying people to vote for person X makes them person X supporters. You can bet if Senator Ted Cruz organized and funded the students, no one would be calling that “the idealism of youth and the freedom to act and speak without fear.” Instead they would say Senator Cruz is using the children to promote his own agenda, having nothing to do with what’s the best education for school children.
Lastly, I asked in a previous post here who wrote the ghostwritten APUSH framework and for the most part I was treated rudely for merely asking the question, granted, by just one person, but no one apparently knows who are the real authors of APUSH. The first person listed as an author wrote that is simply not true. Perhaps if the school board knew, they might have decided differently.
Now all the loud screaming about recalls, censorship, and “a radical rightwing majority” just sounds like bullying. Schools are no bullying zones, supposedly.
That said, people should know I have otherwise supported the author of this blog in all previous instances, to the best of my recollection.
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The APUSH framework is developed by the College Board, a national organization responsible for granting the college credit. There were 400 HS History teachers and about 60 university faculty involved in the re-write. All College Board AP courses go through periodic revision. For more informtation on the course: http://advancesinap.collegeboard.org/english-history-and-social-science/us-history
Regarding the MoveOn petition, it was just that a mechanism to get the petition out and signed by over 40,000 in about a week. There are student leaders from each of our 18 neighborhood high schools. I have met them, I have heard them speak at rallies and at the Board meeting on Thursday. These are intelligent, passionate students who don’t want to see the opportunity to earn college credit for AP History go away because of the political leanings of our school board majority. Our school board majority are the bullies. Take a few minutes to watch video of the meetings. Mr. Witt is the bully.
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Twice now people respond to my asking who are the APUSH authors, given the top listed author says he was not the author, by linking to the very source that listed the authors where the top listed author says he was not the author. If that sounds circular, well there you have it, and that’s why pointing back to the original source is inadequate. The College Board listed names. The top listed name says he is not the author. So if listing names is the way to identify authorship, people want to see names, not be told 460 people were involved. Absolutely no way did 460 people write that. There are names. College Board listed names. The listed names said it wasn’t them. I am asking for the real names. Who are the real people who wrote APUSH?
I am sensitive to this issue because I have proven the K-12 “privacy” curriculum authored by the American Library Association is actually authored by unnamed authors who are not connected to the American Library Association other than the million dollar donations given to the American Library Association to allow this organization to stay hidden behind the American Library Association that falsely claims to be the authors. Why? If people knew the true authorship of the “privacy” curriculum in K-12 public schools, they would reject the curriculum. They accept it from the American Library Association, however, thus the need for the subterfuge.
With respect to APUSH, I have no idea if the same situation applies. I do know the listed authors say they were not the authors, no one is revealing the true authors, and all suggestions to look at provided links only go back to the College Board, the source of the authors who say they are not the authors. So I want to see the names. 460 people is not names and 460 people did not, could not write it. Show me the names. This is a highly trafficked education blog, maybe the highest. Somebody knows the names. Produce them.
“Regarding the MoveOn petition, it was just that a mechanism to get the petition out and signed by over 40,000 in about a week” Well that speaks for itself and the false claims about this being student organized. Further, the main financial backer behind MoveOn is the exact same financial backer using American Library Association to hide behind as it promotes its “privacy” agenda, sorry curriculum, in public schools.
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You’re just repeating a discredited talking point. The authors are right here: http://www.edweek.org/media/letter-us-history.pdf. Of course you wouldn’t know that because Larry Krieger didn’t bother to correct the earlier lie.
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“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.” — Thomas Jefferson – (1743-1826),
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“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. . . The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.” W. E. B. DuBois
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It is historical revisionism. They did exactly the same as Texas State Board of Education. Just like Japan’s MEXT did to please PM Shinzo Abe and his right-wing political gurus who are cheerleading mobsters, hate mongers and xenophobes.
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Please check out and share this video! Drama can be very impactful!
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Who in JeffCo can assure taxpayers that school funds (and additional funds which school employees would like taxpayers to provide) support educational goals appropriate for public schools (rather than the agendas of college professors)?
It seems self-defeating to rally against any board of education that might have the credibility with taxpayers to increase school funding.
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http://www.politichicks.tv/2014/10/jeffco-students-respond-fox-news-proud-punks/
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Once upon a time, Dr. Ravitch supported the same organizations that are now critical of APUSH. Her position was well-reasoned and consistent with the concerns for the constitutional purposes of public education expressed by many states and noted by Justices O’Connor and Souter. Apparently, JeffCo parents are pleased to see a boycott of those constitutional purposes along with the US Constitution bicentennial materials from the Center for Civic Education.
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But the new APUSH is biased, just not in the direction favored by the conservative BOE. Ultimately, the families should decide if they want tax dollars to pay/offer it, and/or have their students take it. The CB should not have undue influence, in any form, over any local district’s preferences, and it is not for teachers to choose. This is a sign of a much larger issue that seems to be going unnoticed.
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It is amazing that the United States can enter a world of blindness and allow all references to injustices in the journey that America has taken to be erased from school books. There are people fighting for the truth in China, Russia, the Middle East and many other unknown areas. The United States willingly enters the uncertainty of ignorance with a Walt Disney mentality. Watching the press being controlled to purvey the Israeli point of view was very interesting and the condemnation of any one who was of a different opinion presented a different picture of America. I find it is highly unusual that the masses follow a tabloid like FOX News and feel that is the final truth. To me these are signs that the holy Roman empire is falling. We are slowly coming to the reality that to find the truth one has to perhaps read the press in Russia or China to find out what is going on in the United States. America honors its heroes like a Palin etc. It puts a Joan River on a pedestal for her rant the the women and children in Palestine should die and automatically the American people can no longer see the dead babies and the crying mothers. The world watches how America can justify the killing of Black boys and then collect money for the perpetrators as if they were the basis of the America defense. All one can say is that from the distance, America looks great and lets us hope that that distance does not get smaller.
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So does this mean that the Boston Tea Party, Paul Reveres ride, and other events from the Revolutionary War are removed from the Curriculum? The Women’s Sufferage movement? Carrie Nation and the abolition of alcohol? How do they propose to teach about the Bill of Rights and the following amendments? For that matter, is the Declaration of Independence removed?
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“Gates-funded”? I am going to have to sit back and let that sink in. Do you have any shred of an idea who that man is, his passions for education and progress, his charitable contributions that put all but the most pious of the pious to shame? Is it easy to take a shot at Bill Gates because he has a lot of money? Is that why you chose to use the name of this century’s most successful businessman to use as an epithet?
This piece was mostly well-intended, but you let the crazy hippie ideology behind it out too frequently. You can get emotionally fired up about issues, especially those involving censorship which are some of the worst, but you owe it to all of your readers to back up that emotion with logic, reason, and rationale, so why not start by fixing the needless swipe at Bill Gates?
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Max, it would be great if this charitable Mr. Gates gave his money to alleviate poverty and disease, and stop telling teachers how to teach, stop trying to develop a metric to quantify teaching and learning. He has wasted billions on education “reform” and failed with every one of his initiatives.
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Do you have any recommendations for actions we can take as a community to reverse this Board majority? Student-led protests continue on Saturday, 11/11, the students are taking action on the weekend this time. Parents are writing the state BOE and testimony will be given today, but they have no jurisdiction. We are a large, strong district and we are more mobilized than we were a couple of weeks ago. But it seems there is little power in the will of the majority of electorate when they didn’t vote and the majority of the BOE can vote on any actions they want to take 3-2. Are there lessons we can learn from other districts? Has anyone had success in reversing the “reform” tide?
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Apparently the teachers’ union plans (unknown to most teachers) on discrediting the conservative board members of the next four years–regardless of the damage done to public education by that tactic. “Shrill … irrationality” is destined to supplant the “thoughtful consideration” supported by David Mathews and the Kettering Foundation.
In earlier times, Dr. Ravitch might agree with the APUSH critiques of National Association of Scholars’ Peter Wood or Fred Hess. She once wrote:
“Can we sustain a healthy civic culture when so few students (or adults) understand the evolution of our political democracy? Can we preserve a common culture when many high-school and even college graduates know little or nothing about our nation’s history and its literary heritage? Can we, even as we recognize increasing numbers of women and people of color among the ranks of great authors, simply abandon those earlier writers whose works inspired them? … If we do not teach our children history, Walt Disney and Oliver Stone will do it for us.”
See also Mirel’s response and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s citations of Mirel’s response in Teaching America: The Case for Civic Education. Also in that book, Quigley, “Teaching Political Sophistication”:
“A civic education reconfigured to elicit more sophisticated responses to political communications of all kinds could protect future generations from the political malaise and social distempers to which these trends–shrill, simplistic, partisan debate and occasional outright irrationality–may give rise. … [C]ivic education can develop the intellectual tools that citizens require to practice self-defense against the toxic elements of public life that too often trigger emotive reaction instead of thoughtful consideration.”
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Eric, I don’t support the radical rightwing group now leading the JeffCo board and I would not have supported them in the 1990s when I argued for strong history education. They don’t want strong history education. They want a slanted history curriculum to match their own views.
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Too bad. He’s out of touch. He deserves the consequence for what he is doing to teachers and students.
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Diane, My son will be on campus on November 4th. We are doing the regular admissions tour but would love to meet with you and hear why you think NYU is a great school. He is one of those heros. Here is his op ed published in the Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26642295/protesting-student-its-not-our-school-board
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Patricia, enjoy NYU. I will not be there when you are.
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Hi, Diane –
How you report what the Jefferson County, Colorado School Board voting for is, with all due respect, not accurate. What they voted for is to review the new curriculum written by The College Board for Advanced Placement high school American History classes. (The College Board writes the SAT and curricula for AP courses.)
The College Board’s curriculum for AP American History classes is, to say the least, odd. Have you read any of it? If you were going to write one (yes, only one) sentence about Thomas Jefferson, would you say “a former colonist who retained his wealth, power and influence after the American Revolution”? Of all the things that Jefferson accomplished, I think that is an odd way to describe him! There is, apparently, no mention of the U.S. military, nor Martin Luther King nor Albert Einstein. Leaving out truth and significant people is not way to write a curriculum, and I’m sure you would agree.
I actually live in Jefferson County, and it so happens that school boards often review new curriculum. So, while there has been lots and lots of misinformation about what is going on here, the truth really is not so astounding nor shocking.
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