A victory for conservatives

Daniel Henninger reports in the Wall Street Journal,

Last year, the College Board, the nonprofit corporation that controls all the high-school Advanced Placement courses and exams, published new guidelines for the AP U.S. history test. They read like a left-wing dream. Obsession with identity, gender, class, crimes against the American Indian and the sins of capitalism suffused the proposed guidelines for teachers of AP American history.

As of a few weeks ago, that tilt in the guidelines has vanished. The College Board’s rewritten 2015 teaching guidelines are almost a model of political fair-mindedness. This isn’t just an about-face. It is an important political event.

The earlier guidelines characterized the discovery of America as mostly the story of Europeans bringing pestilence, destructive plants and cultural obliteration to American Indians. The new guidelines put it this way: “Mutual misunderstandings between Europeans and Native Americans often defined the early years of interaction and trade as each group sought to make sense of the other. Over time, Europeans and Native Americans adopted some useful aspects of each other’s culture.”

Also new: “The effort for American independence was energized by colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, as well as by popular movements that included the political activism of laborers, artisans, and women.” The earlier version never suggested the existence of Franklin—or Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison or anyone resembling a Founding Father. Now they’re back. Even the Federalist Papers were fished out of the memory hole.

Most incredible of all, the private enterprise system is, as they say, reimagined as a force for good: “As the price of many goods decreased, workers’ real wages increased, providing new access to a variety of goods and services.” There’s an idea that has fallen out of favor the past six years.

...What really happened was the resurrection of an American idea the left wants to extinguish—federalism. Some states began to push back. Legislative opposition to the guidelines formed in Georgia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, Colorado and Texas.

Stanley Kurtz, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has argued that the College Board was concerned that its lucrative nationwide testing franchise would be at risk if states began to replace it with their own courses. I think he’s right.

This is a significant event. It marks an important turn in the American culture wars that exploded at the Republican convention in 1992 with the religious right, a movement that faded but whose sense of political alienation has remained alive, whether in the original tea-party groups or today with voters adopting the improbable Donald Trump.

...Is the country polarized? How could it not be? Is there a solution? Take a look at how the AP U.S. history mess was handled. Someone rewrote those guidelines into a reasonable political accommodation. It is not impossible.

Read more here.

Illusions

Jefferson County lies west of Denver. In the most recent school board election there, conservatives were elected to a 3 to 2 majority. They came up with a new pay plan to pay effective teachers more than ineffective teachers. They also are contemplating a look at how American history is being taught. You may have seen media attention to walkouts by students and teachers in protest.

Ross Kaminsky compares the teachers union to the magician who uses sleight of hand:

A skillful magician makes you look in one place while the real deception is elsewhere; his is essentially the talent of distraction. And so it is with the chaos, sick-outs and protests in Jefferson County, where high school teachers, spurred by teachers union leadership, wave around the shiny object of "censorship" — while being aided by manipulable students, incurious reporters, and gullible parents — when the real issues are financial.

Like the lady being sawed in half, Jeffco "censorship" claims are an illusion. But unlike a magic trick, the fraud being perpetrated on students, parents and taxpayers by the Jeffco Education Association and the National Education Association is truly harmful.

Censorship is what the school board is opposing, not supporting.

Isn't it a good thing that students are protesting? Kaminsky says no:

Some say that it's good for protesting students to have a voice. They are wrong. Jeffco teenagers are fertile ground for viral indignation based on gauzy whispers of wrongdoing.

They are also a naïve collective of "unknown unknowns." They don't know about the objectionable structure of the new AP U.S. History curriculum which emphasizes themes such as "the formation of gender, class, racial and ethnic identities" but excludes Benjamin Franklin, the Gettysburg Address and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

They don't know that the real issue in Jeffco is a union objecting to changes in how teachers get paid, because unions explicitly prioritize their coffers over your student's education. They don't know that the NEA has planned for months to manipulate them on to street corners because sign-waving students garner more sympathy than a union boss does. And they don't know that they're participating in an illusion at their own expense.

But where are the parents? Where is their outrage over their children being left without teachers, without learning, without adult supervision? Moms and dads should be furious with teachers and union leaders.

The illusion of a "censorship" controversy must end: Students should be punished for unexcused absences. Parents should be scolded for their complicity. The school district should educate families on the real conflict with the union. Teachers should have their pay docked for every day of school missed. And the board of education should take dramatic steps to minimize the malignant influence of teachers unions that are so willing to damage your child's future in order to protect their own cash flow.

Read more here.