Battle over our history — again

Our history is filled with fights over history, and we're doomed to repeat them. Over and over again.

This time, it's the College Board's revised curriculum framework for its advanced placement U.S. history course. About 500,000 high school juniors nationwide take the course annually. Revisions take effect this fall.

Even though the framework has been around since 2012, only recently did it draw the ire of political conservatives and conservative groups. It's been condemned by the National Association of Scholars, a group that targets liberal bias in higher education. The Heartland Institute, Concerned Women for America, Glenn Beck, and the Republican National Committee each smacked the framework.

The problem? the framework, they contend, paints too negative a picture of American history. They insist it's 'revisionist, ' 'radical' and 'subversive.' They argue, for example, it talks about white supremacy factoring into westward expansion but fails to mention how, they insist, the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. It focuses too much on problems and social divisions, and doesn't list the names of great Americans, great achievements and battlefield triumphs.

In its defense, authors of the framework point out that its an advanced course, so its students have been exposed to the prominent names and events critics complain are not listed. And, certainly, they'll make appearances in the broader themes set out in the framework. The main objective is to leave plenty of flexibility and space for teachers to dig deeper and encourage students to develop the sort of thinking skills used by historians to gather evidence and draw conclusions. It's designed to take factual knowledge and turn it into critical analysis.

'What it's done is kind of said, OK, so there's a narrative of American history that has to be present, but you're going to get to delve more deeply into it. I was just surprised that people would see any controversy in that,' said Sean Neilly, district social studies facilitator and a teacher at Kennedy High School who has reviewed the framework.

'For example, getting students to recognize more clearly causation, getting students to construct a historical argument. These are what are, to my mind, pretty beneficial outcomes. I was sort of surprised that people would object,' Neilly said.

I wish I were surprised. But I've watched the usual suspects call for turning history education into 'patriotism' class too many times. Fact is, there's nothing in this framework that says a teacher can't present conservative viewpoints. Maybe folks who view everything through today's hyperpartisan prism don't like the way parts of it are worded. But the last thing we need are pundits, think tanks and politicians writing a history curriculum to suit their present day political objectives.

I want my kids to learn that real patriotism means acknowledging mistakes, identifying problems, understanding what happened and figuring out how to make things right in the future. It's not applying a thick coat of whitewash to anything that makes us look bad, feel uncomfortable or doesn't fit some gilded ideological narrative. An exceptional nation can't be afraid of its own history.

l Comments: (319) 398-8453; todd.dorman@thegazette.com