Critiques of the History of Communism Academic Standards

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Academic Standards

• AHA Sends Letter to Tennessee Senate Committee Registering Concerns with History of Communism Education Bill | American Historical Association
  • The interpretation presented in SB 1890 has little grounding in historical reality. The bill includes a misleading and factually incorrect reference to “the increasing threat of communism in the United States . . . throughout the twentieth century.” In fact, membership in the Communist Party USA was always small and declined precipitously after 1956, the year that Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin’s role in the Great Terror. It would be more accurate to note that the international threat of communism grew substantially during the Cold War, but this legislation barely mentions the decades-long competition between the US and the Soviet Union and instead suggests that American communism was largely a domestic issue. This is not good history. It will not provide a strong foundation for student learning.

• Communism, American Exceptionalism Latest Flashpoints in State History Standards | Ed Week
  • In Florida, newly adopted social studies standards on communism instruct educators to teach students about the “repackaging of Marxist ideology” in contemporary political discourse and the “dangers of propaganda” in modern media. Historians have said the standards present a skewed picture and minimize the consequences of McCarthyism in the United States.

• New Florida Curriculum on Communism is a “Dangerous Recasting” of McCarthyism | PEN America
  • This new unit is a dangerous recasting of McCarthyism as patriotism and dissent as ‘un-American.’ Florida’s new standards impose a single, rigid set of beliefs such as criticizing communism, when education should champion the exploration of diverse perspectives. A classroom should be a place where ideas meet, not where ideology reign

• Florida’s communism problem | Historian Timothy Snyder
  • By defining totalitarianism as a foreign ideology to be contrasted with American principles, Florida legislators have denied students not just the knowledge of what the term actually means, but also the possibility to appeal to a rich body of thought that might help them to avoid risks to freedom and democracy.

• Florida’s New Social Studies Standards: A Deepening Crisis for Critical Thinking and Honest History | Freedom to Read Project
  • Even more concerning, the redefinition of “McCarthyism” suggests that labeling anticommunist efforts as harmful is inappropriate, an attempt to sanitize one of the most notorious examples of government-driven suppression of speech. One standard states that instruction will include that “using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anticommunism” is communist propaganda at work, implying that such criticisms are biased or illegitimate.

• Florida revives McCarthyism, anti-communism with classroom guidelines | Tampa Bay Times
  • Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor specializing in the history of education, made that comment regarding Florida’s proposed social studies standards on communism. stated the curriculum presents a “highly biased picture” that echoes Cold War-era rhetoric and feels “antiquarian”.

• Teaching standards, hijacked by the right | Editorial | Sun Sentinel
  • At the high school level, the Florida standards devote 30 pages to communism, and not nearly so many to any other subject. One ulterior motive that critics rightly suspected is apparent in this language on page 148: “Identify propaganda and defamation utilized to delegitimize anti-communists and anti-communist movements.” Examples include “using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anti-communism.” And “slander against anti-communists, such as red-baiter and Red Scare.”

• Florida’s anti-communism curriculum faces criticism | Orlando Sentinel
  • Florida’s proposed anti-communism curriculum faces criticism from some historians, particularly for its treatment of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who pushed a communist panic in the….

• Critics warn Florida’s new teaching standards rehabilitate aspects of the anti-communist Red Scare | CBS News
  • The standards soften decades of criticism of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a political movement to root out what he labeled communism in government, the Civil Rights Movement and artistic communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The public inquisitions, ideological loyalty tests and firings of that period are often viewed as a shameful chapter in U.S. history.

• This Fall, Florida Students Will Be Forced to Take “Anti-Communist” Classes | Truthout
  • John White, a professor of English and Adolescent Literacy at the University of North Florida, is also troubled by the fallacies put forward in the History of Communism Standards.
  • “The right wing says that teachers should not indoctrinate students, but they have put forward a curriculum that indoctrinates students with a particular viewpoint,” he said. “The curriculum conflates communism and socialism as if they are one ideology.” White also agreed with Schrecker: “The curriculum ignores the fact that Joseph McCarthy was the epitome of a blowhard who has been widely discredited. Worse, the term ‘communism’ seems to be a catch phrase for any ideas that the right does not like.”

Curriculum

• Florida revamps its civics curriculum with a focus on patriotism
  • Making changes that inject patriotism into the curriculum was a priority of top Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis during the legislative session that ended April 30. At a bill-signing event in June, DeSantis called the civic curriculum “fundamental.”

• ‘Portraits in Patriotism’ curriculum queued for House vote

• Sprinkle list: Lawmakers award $2 million to Portraits in Patriotism
  • Lawmakers are providing $2 million to float Portraits of Patriotism, a new education program warning students of the dangers of communism and totalitarianism.
  • Championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, the proposal requires the Department of Education to revamp government education, including through “Portraits in Patriotism,” a video library of first-person accounts from immigrants who lived under authoritarian regimes.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis signs education bills on ‘viewpoint diversity,’ new civics curriculum in Florida
  • H.B. 5, known as the “Portraits of Patriotism Act,” tasks Florida’s Department of Education to develop civics curriculum that will include lessons on the “evils” of communist and totalitarian regimes. 
  • DeSantis condemned how some colleges and universities discuss communist leaders and ideologies.
  • Mao Zedong, a Chinese communist revolutionary, is spoken of “positively” on college campuses and Che Guevara, a Cuban revolutionary, is celebrated on shirts, he said.
  • “This guy was a total communist thug and yet that’s the kind of environment that you see,” DeSantis said. “And so I think by us having this, we’re really going to be, I think pushing back against some of the whitewashing that’s been done.” 

• Florida’s New Civics Curriculum
  • Training for the new curriculum began this summer. A review of articles describing reactions of teachers in Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa to the new curriculum and training identified several concerns: 1) Teachers’ initial impressions were that the curriculum is imbued with Christian and conservative tenets. In answer to their questions, they were told it is a misconception that Founders desired strict separation of church and state. The Founders’ words in the First Amendment denying establishment of religion were intended only to protect freedom of worship. 2) Teachers were told they must teach the negative aspects of U.S. history so no child will “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” A slide in the presentation shows drawings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson with dialogue bubbles indicating their goal would be to eventually eliminate slavery. 

Legislation

• Florida proposes teaching students about ‘the fall of Nicolas Maduro’
• New bill would require Nebraska K-12 schools to teach anti-communist lessons
• Tennessee bill mandating lessons on the ‘history of communism’ passes Senate
  • TN Senate passes ‘Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act’ to allow Judeo-Christian values in history classes
• Crucial Communism Teaching Act
  • The bill asks that the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation create educational resources to promote the teaching of some of the impacts of communism throughout recent history.^[1] It aims to ensure that high school students learn that, among other things, “communism has led to the deaths of over 100 million victims worldwide”, and that “1.5 billion people still suffer under communism.”^[1] It additionally asks that students learn of the actions of regimes such as that of the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs, and antidemocratic efforts in places such as Hong Kong.
  • H.R. 2080: Crucial Communism Teaching Act