U.S. history teachers are using "digital sources and primary documents" rather than textbooks, according to a report by the American Historical Association, reports Dana Goldstein in the New York Times.
Teachers said they tried to present “multiple sides of every story” and depict U.S. history as “a complex mix of accomplishments and setbacks."
However, the report warned that lessons in some left-leaning districts "seemed to direct students toward viewing American history . . . as a string of injustices," writes Goldstein. In conservative areas, "laws restricting the teaching of 'divisive concepts' had been 'extremely corrosive of teacher morale and detrimental to the integrity of good history teaching',” according to the report.
Many teachers used neutral sources, such as websites of the Smithsonian Institution and other federal archives, notes Goldstein. The YouTube videos by young-adult author John Green are popular.
However, 42 percent had relied on materials from the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center's Learning for Justice project, and about a quarter had used the Zinn Education Project, which "often celebrates left-leaning activist movements," she writes. Seventeen percent of teachers had used the 1619 Project Education Network, which seeks to reframe” American history around slavery. Nineteen percent they "purposefully avoided" it.
"On the more conservative side of the spectrum, 18 percent of teachers had drawn from Teaching American History, a project of the Ashbrook Center, a nonprofit whose goals are to inculcate 'civic virtue' and create 'informed patriots',” Goldstein writes. "Just 4 percent of teachers had used the 1776 curriculum from the Christian-conservative Hillsdale College, but twice as many — 8 percent — said they purposefully avoided those materials, which have become closely associated with Republican political activists."
The historians looked at ethnic studies, finding a "left-leaning discipline," writes Goldstein. Lessons focused on “power, privilege and oppression,” and assignments encouraged students to explore “liberatory mind-sets” and “Indigenous ways of knowing.”
In interviews, some social studies teachers, even those who described themselves as on the left, were skeptical of these lessons. A Colorado teacher complained about “equity buzzwords.”