State education board right to keep political bias out of history lessons
Published January 14, 2015
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, January 12, 2015.
We all want our state’s children to receive an education that imparts to them a sense of civic pride and responsibility, but we don’t want them to be indoctrinated in any particular political dogma. North Carolina parents concerned about that possibility can breathe a little easier now that the state school board has recommended an expanded program of materials available for high-school history teachers to use in class.
An Arlington, Va.-based organization, the Bill of Rights Institute, had received a $100,000 state contract to develop materials for a civics and economics course usually taught in 9th and 10th grades, The Associated Press reported recently. The organization receives funding from foundations associated with David and Charles Koch, politically influential conservatives. Some parents and educators were concerned that the materials might contain political bias and distortions.
But after discussion, the state Department of Public Instruction will now encourage teachers to draw their American history course materials from nearly a dozen sources, not just the Bill of Rights Institute. The sources include the National Humanities Center, the Library of Congress and the state Bar Association.
“After the board meeting last time, when there was a discussion about the Bill of Rights Institute, we felt it was important to indicate there are other resources we want teachers to review,” state schools superintendent June Atkinson told the AP. “We also wanted to emphasize that it really is a choice of a teacher in a classroom to determine which resources meet their teaching styles, meet their requirements.”
Starting with the next academic year, at least half of the content of the civics and economics course will be devoted to the country’s founding principles. This is proper and commendable. But for those lessons to promote a partisan political views – especially when our state and our country are politically divided – would not be proper or commendable.
