The past is what happened. History is is what we decide to pass on about what happens. That includes deciding what was important (Martin Luther) and what wasn’t (the 1321 Leper’s Plot.) Now that Leper’s plot is fascinating and the would make a pretty good movie these days but it’s just not worth 15 minutes in a middle or high school survey class. That’s where we should be hitting the high points, the prime movers, they things that lead to the next things. It’s why we discuss Archduke Franz Ferdinand but most people can’t tell you crap about the Black Hand.

And then there’s this 1619 thing. In one sentence: It is nothing short of preposterous to claim that an obscure (if admittedly heinous) one-day commercial transaction — involving two or three white males in a tiny Virginia hamlet a century and a half before (!) the founding of a nation — is more reflective of said nation and of an entire people than the 15-to-20-year era of strife and quarrels including a continent-wide war (the American Revolution along with its attendant historical documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), which concerned every single one of its (then) two and a half million inhabitants, as well as the power structure of the entire Western world.  

So someone explain this to me:  “Biden Administration Offers Grants to Teach Children ‘1619 Project,’ Inherent Racism Central to U.S.“ It’s already become muddled enough. I spent two weeks in a MS history classroom in the Before Times. They were studying the beginnings of the American war for Independence. Intolerable Acts, Tea Party, Sons of Liberty, Paul Revere, Battles of Lexington and Concord (Shot heard ’round the world?)? One paragraph. And then there were pages of “check the box” stuff. Sybil Ludington gets a ‘graph. “Indians” get a page. As did slaves. Fort Ticonderoga? Valley Forge? Mentioned in passing. An attempt to delve into the military strategy behind the war in the Acela corridor but nothing about Francis Marion or the Green Mountain Boys. Imagine taking a HUGE list of people, places and topics pertaining to the subject, writing each on a marble, throwing ALL the marbles into a bucket, drawing out a fistful, giving them each equal treatment, then moving on to the War of 1812.

And it’s not getting any better. Stanley Kurtz at National Review puts a new Biden administration proposed rule under the microscope and finds a new variant of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) cancer – public school civics classes.

Mary Grabar: American History Is Being Falsified to Sow Political Division.

The version of history the left/academia are serving up is the kind of history you’d impose on a conquered people whose will you were trying to break.

Parents ARE beginning to push back. Parents Revolt After Texas’s No. 1 School District Tries To Institutionalize Racism It just needs to be in more places than Texas, because the coastal elites view them as bitter clingers anyway. New York is getting some of it. Those who can are voting with their feet. Black Parent Compares Critical Race Theory to KKK Intimidation Tactics.

Districts are not taking this laying down however: School District Tells Principals To Create Fake Curriculum To Send Parents After Complaints Of Indoctrination. Here’s a good starting point for those who oppose. How to Fight Critical Race Theory | City Journal.

Virginia School Board Shuts Down Parent’s Objections To Racist Indoctrination

Other stuff:

Agitators Get Dirty To Push Institutional Racism In Texas’s No. 1 School District

Parents organizing across US against ‘dangerous’ critical race theory in classrooms: Former professor. “What they are doing with the critical race theory is pure indoctrination.”

THIS one was fun, albeit non-binding: Arizona School Board Flees from Concerned Parents, Parents Elect New Board.