That didn’t take long: Biden removes Trump’s ’1776 report’ on U.S. history from White House website - The Washington Post

That didn’t take long: Biden removes Trump’s ’1776 report’ on U.S. history from White House website - The Washington Post

That didn’t take long: Biden removes Trump’s ‘1776 Report’ on U.S. history from White House website

Well, that didn’t take long: A report on U.S. history published by the Trump administration on Monday was removed from the White House website by President Biden a few days later — and he disbanded the new commission that wrote it.

“The 1776 Report” was released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and immediately lambasted by historians as racist and false for many of its statements, including its defense of slaveholding Founding Fathers and of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which at the 1787 Constitutional Convention allowed enslavers to count their enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for determining representation in the House of Representative as well as for taxation purposes.

It also likened American progressives to European fascists and contended that the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. had devolved into “identity politics.”

On Wednesday, Biden signed the “Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which, among other things, disbanded the Advisory 1776 Commission. Trump had created it in November and ordered it to issue a report calling for “patriotic education.”

Trump’s ‘patriotic education’ report excuses Founding Fathers for owning slaves and likens progressives to Mussolini

Section 10, Part C of Biden’s executive order says unceremoniously that the Nov. 2 executive order that Trump had signed establishing the commission “is hereby revoked.”

Not long after the new president signed the order, the report could no longer be found on the White House website where it had resided for a few days.

Trump created the 18-member 1776 Advisory Commission after months of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and charged it with promoting a “pro-American curriculum” that CONTINUE READING: That didn’t take long: Biden removes Trump’s ’1776 report’ on U.S. history from White House website - The Washington Post

Trump’s 1776 Commission Releases a Literal Whitewash of U.S. History | Diane Ravitch's blog

Trump’s 1776 Commission Releases a Literal Whitewash of U.S. History | Diane Ravitch's blog

Trump’s 1776 Commission Releases a Literal Whitewash of U.S. History

On the day before the election, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a “1776 Commission” to rewrite American history. This commission was intended to refute the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which told the story of American history from the view of African Americans. It was also, allegedly, an answer to “critical race theory,” which you can be sure Trump could not define. I thought this was a bad idea, since history should be written by historians, not by presidential commissions packed with cronies and ideologues.

On December 18, with 33 days left in his term in office, Trump announced the members of his commission, all predictably conservatives and reactionaries. The group was headed by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, a Trump ally. I called this “absurd.”

Many thought that the commission couldn’t possibly rewrite American history in the few days allowed to them, but miraculously they issued a report just a few days ago. Presumably, it was written before the commission ever CONTINUE READING: Trump’s 1776 Commission Releases a Literal Whitewash of U.S. History | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: The 1776 Commission On Authentic Education

CURMUDGUCATION: The 1776 Commission On Authentic Education

The 1776 Commission On Authentic Education

The 1776 Commission released their thing today, and pardon my French, Mom, but holy shit is it bad. You knew it was going to bad. It's really bad. You probably didn't know that Progressivism is on the same Challenges to American Principles list with slavery and fascism. Slavery, by the way, is addressed primarily through a massive whataboutism. 45 pages, and every one of them is filled with horrific, racist, dumb, awful awfulness (okay, pages 2 and 4 are blank). 43 pages of awful (without any footnotes or endnotes or citations or bibliography in sight for this work of ultimate scholarship). I don't have the time at the moment to pick apart all of it (I'll link to it, but you really shouldn't read it on a full stomach, and empty stomach, or at the end of a hard day).

I will note that the report came out remarkably quickly--the members of the commission were announced on December 18, which gave them a month, and a month full of holidays like that. It's almost as if someone had already pretty much written the report ahead of time (or, it turns out, as if someone had simply cut and pasted big chunks of it). 

At any rate, I'm going to focus on just one section, because it articulates so very clearly how terribly, dangerously wrong these folks are about education.

In Appendix IV: Teaching Americans About Their Country, after the section on the misuse of history, after the section about the decline of education (late 1800s, with the rise of progressivism), we CONTINUE READING:  CURMUDGUCATION: The 1776 Commission On Authentic Education

CURMUDGUCATION: 1776 Commission Members Appointed (And It's About What You'd Expect)

CURMUDGUCATION: 1776 Commission Members Appointed (And It's About What You'd Expect)

1776 Commission Members Appointed (And It's About What You'd Expect)

You remember just six 2020 weeks ago (that's roughly a year and a half in regular time), Dear Leader proclaimed that the 1776 Commission would be formed in order to create a more perfect set of teaching stuff that would teach our young people to think about our country in the Correct Way. The proclamation announcing this was a piece of work, among other things laying out how we should teach students to have the Proper View of our country (we were bad about Black people for a while, but now that's all fixed) and wipe out that 1619 Project stuff. It was not exactly lined up with the goal of teaching critical thinking, but, hey, Patriotism.

Now Dear Leader has appointed his crew, and it has gone about as one would expect. You can check out the official list here, but here's a rundown of who some of these folks are.

Larry Arn will be the chair. Arn is the president of hyper-conservative ultra-Christianist Euro-centric Hillsdale College (Betsy DeVos was just there to deliver a Jeremiad).

Members include Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, the campus right-wing group, and recent receiver of hard talk from Geraldo Rivera (Trump lost. Knock it off.). Because a history CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: 1776 Commission Members Appointed (And It's About What You'd Expect)

CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

Like many of you, I'm hoping that Trump's Executive Order establishing a 1776 Commission will be rendered moot sometime within the next 12-2,215 hours. But because, like many of you, I need something to distract me from doomscrolling (and the board of directors is napping), I'm going to go ahead and look at this damn fool executive order. The short form is that this is all empty political hooey, but I'm trying to kill time here.

First, it has to be said that somebody at the White House has a real gift for hamfisted baloney writing. Right of the bat we get the purpose of this EO-- "to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union." Because he's sure he heard that "more perfect union" thingy in some patriotic program once. 

Let's go.

Section 1. Purpose.

The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.

I'm not sure a "founding" can "envision" anything. Nor am I sure about "natural law" and its traditions. So much about this EO sets off a long-time English teachers detector for "this student does not understand the words and phrases that he has copied from some other source." 

It goes on to note that the formation of a republic (notice-- not a democracy, but a republic, as all CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

Trump creates 1776 Commission to promote 'patriotic education' - POLITICO

Trump creates 1776 Commission to promote 'patriotic education' - POLITICO

Trump creates 1776 Commission to promote 'patriotic education'

The president has attacked lessons that emphasize the role of slavery in American history and Black Americans' contributions to the U.S.

President Donald Trump on Monday created a “1776 Commission” to promote "patriotic education” and counter lessons that he says divide Americans on race and slavery and teach students to “hate their own country."

On the eve of Election Day, Trump directed the commission’s creation, via executive order, to “better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”

The order follows Trump’s recent attacks on critical race theory and the 1619 Project, directed by The New York Times Magazine, which revisits the country’s history with a focus on slavery and Black Americans’ contributions.

Racial justice issues have been at the center of this election following protests this summer and fall over the police killings of Black men and women. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at protesters, positioning himself as the "law and order" candidate.

His order blasts historical accounts that he says have “vilified” the nation’s founders.

“This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured,” the order states. “Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together.”

He blames “one-sided and divisive accounts” on race for failing to recognize the country’s “successful effort to shake off the curse of slavery and to use the lessons of that struggle to guide our work toward equal rights for all citizens in the present.”

The commission’s 20 members will be appointed by the president and serve for CONTINUE READING: Trump creates 1776 Commission to promote 'patriotic education' - POLITICO