Critiques of Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum

A Collection of feedback about Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum from Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Historians & Journalists

• Jan. 22, 2026

  In September 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced a partnership with more than 40 conservative organizations to create civics programming celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. In December of 2025, Secretary McMahon announced the U.S. Department of Education’s History Rocks! Trail to Independence Tour. Since December, Secretary McMahon and other education leaders have visited schools in several states. According to the Department of Education, Secretary McMahon and other education leaders plan to visit all 50 States to “strengthen civic education nationwide”.

  Hillsdale College is listed as an America 250 Civics Education Coalition Partner on the U.S. Department of Education website. Hillsdale College has its own History curriculum, called Hillsdale 1776. Hillsdale 1776 has been adopted by the South Dakota Board of Education and rejected by the Pennridge, PA School District Community. Vermillion Education founder Jordan Adams, a Hillsdale graduate, assisted in developing the curriculum. Adams is currently on the Texas Social Studies Curriculum panel and consults with School Boards for Academic Excellence.

  The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum is approximately 3,268 pages long; parents do not have the time to read it all. So, what are some criticisms of the curriculum? What do historians and journalists have to say about the curriculum? To help, a list of articles critiquing the curriculum is available below.

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  Criticisms of the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum primarily center on its pedagogical approach, historical accuracy, and ideological foundations. Key critiques from historians, educators, and organizations include:

  1. Distortion of Modern History: Critics argue the curriculum reframes American history as a “crusade” of conservative ideals against liberal movements. It has been panned for portraying the New Deal and Great Society as programs that fostered state dependence rather than as effective social reforms.
  2. Omission of Racial Realities: Historians contend it “whitewashes” history by downplaying the systemic nature of slavery and racism. It is criticized for excluding the biological racism and personal actions of Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson regarding his slaves, presenting their views on equality as more inclusive than historical records suggest.
  3. Ideological Indoctrination: Educators argue it teaches students what to think rather than how to think by promoting “American Exceptionalism” as an absolute virtue. It characterizes modern social justice movements as “identity politics” that undermine national unity.
  4. Developmental Inappropriateness: In states like South Dakota, where versions were adopted, teachers noted that the content was often too complex for young children, requiring second graders to grasp subjects such as the fall of the Roman Empire or medieval religious conflicts.
  5. Misleading Portrayal of Civil Rights: The curriculum is accused of framing affirmative action as a departure from original civil rights ideals, suggesting that modern movements for racial reconciliation actually prevent healing.
  6. Lack of Diverse Perspectives: Native American tribes and other groups have objected that the curriculum minimizes their histories or portrays them in a “warlike” or negative light when mentioned.
  7. Partisan Origins: As a direct response to the 1619 Project, critics view it as a political tool born from the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission rather than an objective educational resource.

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  Articles

  • Pennsylvania
    • Pennsylvania school district requires social studies classes to incorporate right-wing propaganda, | Popular Information,
      • “For example, the Hillsdale curriculum repeatedly suggests that America’s Founding Fathers had deep reservations about slavery. The ninth grade Pennridge curriculum will require a Hillsdale lesson that encourages students to “[c]onsider also that even among the southern founders who supported slavery or held slaves, several leading founders expressed regret and fear of divine retribution for slavery in America, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.” The curriculum states that, “Some freed their slaves as well, such as George Washington.” The same wording is also included in the required Hillsdale lesson for fourth graders.”
    • What’s In Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum?  | Bucks County Beacon
      • “As an actual curriculum, 1776 is not particularly well-crafted, developmentally appropriate, thorough, complete, or well, good. As an attempt to create and transmit the right wing argument against democracy in general and our country’s history in particular, it’s coherent, consistent, and it absolutely indoctrinates. No public school in this country should be using it, or anything built on top of it.”
  • South Dakota
    • The Hillsdale Effect: South Dakota’s Troubling New Social Studies Standards | NCSS
      • “Through an analysis of the core principles of the new standards, as well as a comparison to the current South Dakota standards (adopted in 2015), this article examines the challenges that the new standards pose for social studies teachers. These include serious problems of implementation, pedagogy, and content that teachers will face as they prepare to meet the state’s new requirements.“
    • Educators question ‘age appropriateness’ of South Dakota’s proposed social studies standards | Argus Leader
      • “Stephen Jackson, a member of last year’s workgroup who is also an associate professor of history at the University of Sioux Falls, said the set of standards asks very young students to understand very complex topics.”
      • “Jackson told the Argus Leader one of his qualms with the document is the emphasis on rote memorization of facts, as well as the use of the term “Triangle Trade” instead of a more historically accurate description, the “Transatlantic Slave Trade.”
      • “Paul Harens, a retired teacher from Yankton who was on last year’s workgroup, questioned the scope and sequence of the standards, too.”
  • Tennessee
    • Curriculum claims MLK did not favor ‘force of law’ | News Channel 5, Nashville, REVEALED: Charter school program favored by Tennessee governor rewrites civil rights history
      • “The 1776 Curriculum kind of has their own view of Dr. King and what he would believe today,” David Ewing noted.”
      • “That curriculum endorses portions of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, expressing his hope “that my poor little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
      • “That one moment of that famous great 20th-century speech of ‘judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin’ cannot just be a meme or taken in a vacuum,” Ewing said.
      • “In fact, Hillsdale says students should be taught that “the civil rights movement was almost immediately turned into programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”
  • Texas
    • Jordan Adams’ Road to Content Advisor for Texas Social Studies TEKS
      • In Sarasota, Florida, a $28,000 contract he pitched through Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler was rejected by one vote after approximately 70 community members appeared to oppose it. His pitch document described his role as implementing policies “over the objections of staff members,” meaning he would work within a district to advance the board’s agenda even when the district’s own teachers, curriculum directors, and administrators opposed the changes. That is what he was selling.

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  • Historians
    • AHA Sends Letter Opposing Proposed South Dakota Social Studies Standards (April 2023)
      • “The AHA has sent a letter to the South Dakota Board of Education Standards registering strong concern that the social studies standards draft on the agenda for the Board of Education Standards’ April 17 meeting fails to satisfy the AHA’s Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences. “The document’s numerous flaws can be traced to a process that was rushed, secretive, and driven by political motives at the expense of the educational needs of South Dakota students,” the AHA wrote. “The AHA joins a clear majority of South Dakotans in its assessment of this unabashed attempt to interfere in K–12 social studies education.”
    • History Bright and Dark, | The New York Review
      • “To its credit, the 1776 Curriculum includes voices it abhors; there are, for example, several speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt. But it makes clear how students should read them. By the time of the New Deal, the country was burdened by “the so-called fourth branch [of government] called the bureaucracy or the administrative state.” Among proposed quiz questions is “How does the administrative state violate the principle of separation of powers?” And harking back to the sacred Declaration is the suggestion that “students should…consider whether political life under centralized, bureaucratic rule might be understood to resemble the rule of a faraway parliament or king.”
    • Hillsdale College’s New Strategy in the School Wars Merges Curriculum and Privatization through “Choice”, | History News Network
      • “The Hillsdale Curriculum critiques the Progressive Era as an unwarranted expansion of government and characterizes its leaders as socialist bureaucrats who rejected America’s “true” principles of limited government, free-market capitalism, and individual rights. But unlike Hillsdale, those earlier reformers believed public schools could be a force for good—an “embryonic community,” in John Dewey’s words, where students would internalize the “spirit of service” and learn the “instruments of effective self-direction.” Progressives’ impact echoes ironically in the label school-choice advocates now use to denounce public schools: “government schools.”

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  • Journalist
    • A College Fights ‘Leftist Academics’ by Expanding Into Charter Schools | New York Times
      • “Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton who was one of the chief critics of The Times’s 1619 Project, also criticized the 1776 Curriculum, calling it overly positive.”
      • “It talks about the enormity of slavery, but in almost every case, everything that’s bad about America will be undone by what is good,” Dr. Wilentz said. “Almost, literally, that American ideals will overcome whatever evils may be there.”
      • Hillsdale’s history curriculum also appears to take on the modern liberal state. A school curriculum guide posted in one school’s charter lists the book “New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.” The author, Burton Folsom Jr., is a fellow and professor emeritus at Hillsdale, and a frequent speaker at conservative conferences.”
    • Answer Sheet: New Breed of Charter School Pushes Limits on Separation of Church, State | National Education Policy Center
      • “The fastest-growing sector of right-wing charters combines both a classical “virtuous” curriculum with “hyper-patriotism,” exemplified by charter schools that adopt the Hillsdale 1776 curriculum, which is centered on Western civilization and designed to help “students acquire a mature love for America,” its organizers say. The curriculum comes from Hillsdale College in Michigan, whose longtime president, Larry Arnn, is an ally of Trump’s and is aligned with DeVos. A Hillsdale K-12 civics and U.S. history curriculum released in 2021 extols conservative values, attacks liberal ones and distorts civil rights history, saying, for example: “The civil rights movement was almost immediately turned into programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”
    • Conservatives are changing K-12 education, and one Christian college is at the center | NBC News
      • “The American Historical Association has accused the 1776 Curriculum of downplaying racism, the Great Migration and the power of the Ku Klux Klan. (Hillsdale says its curriculum “comprehensively” covers “points of shame” in America’s history, mentioning slavery more than 3,300 times.)”
    • Hey, America! Hillsdale College is aiming for you, too. | Metro Times
      • “The recent attack on schools of education by Hillsdale President Larry P. Arnn, a key political ally of former President Donald Trump. Among other things, Arnn said teachers come from the “dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges”;
    • History, Hillsdale-Style |  ELLIOT SMITH
      • “Historians have criticized the 1776 Curriculum for its historical inaccuracies and political slant. For instance, it compares the Progressive movement to fascism under Mussolini because both “sought to centralize power under the management of so-called experts.” As one passage from the Hillsdale Curriculum explains, “Progressivism was a rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence as well as the form of the Constitution.”

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  • Blog Post
    • Hillsdale College & Their Weapons of Choice
      • “Hillsdale College, 1776 Commission, Barney Charter School Initiative, American Classical Education, Inc., 1776 Civics Curriculum —those names should give us pause and set off alarm bells!!! But most people know little to nothing about a rapidly expanding plan aimed at framing the political thought of the next generation of Americans.”
  • Podcast
    • Adam Hochschild on Anti-Woke History
      • “Ron DeSantis is campaigning for president promising to “stop woke history” – stop teaching about slavery and its legacy of institutional racism. Adam Hochschild found the history curriculum DeSantis wants—the Hillsdale College “1776 Curriculum.” He reports on what’s in it—and what’s not.”

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