Opinion / Politics
The Little-Known Organization Waging War on American History and Civics Education
Posted Thursday, June 3, 2021 Jun 3, 2021 | By AMAC Newsline | 115 Comments 115
AMAC Exclusive
America's schools are on the front lines of an ongoing movement that threatens the very foundations of our society. With the help of four new education funding bills working their way through Congress, a pro-racism regulation being pushed by Biden's Department of Education, and politically activist teachers and education bureaucrats in nearly every state and the school district in the country, Democrats and their radical foot soldiers are poised to carry out a total and far-reaching program to indoctrinate America's youth in leftwing ideology under the banner of reforming American history and civics education— an effort AMAC Newsline has previously covered.
This extraordinary undertaking is not happening by accident. A little-known nonprofit called iCivics is increasingly emerging as the driving force behind Democrats' crusade to impose "woke" civics education in classrooms throughout the country – a crusade hostile to the core principles upon which this country was founded.
In February of this year, writer Stanley Kurtz, who has extensively reported on these efforts, detailed how in 2018, a coalition of iCivics and several other liberal activist groups "managed to gut the highly regarded Massachusetts K-12 standards on the history of America, the West, and the world while putting oppression-obsessed curriculum standards in their place." Now, the same group is trying to do the same across the country. As Kurtz also recently outlined, the legislation currently before Congress would provide billions of dollars in funding for a federal takeover of civics education to remake it in the image of the anti-American left. Much–maybe most–of that federal money would go to iCivics and its coalition partners.
Most Americans outside of middle school and high school teachers have probably never heard of iCivics or CivXNow, the activist coalition run by iCivics. On the surface, iCivics claims that it is a moderate organization, billing itself as a tool that teachers, boards of education, and state legislators can use to encourage responsible student engagement in the democratic process. But it's a façade. As with so many liberal educational institutions in recent years, iCivics has been hijacked by political extremists.
The leadership at iCivics has a long history of advocating for far-left political causes and directly attempting to indoctrinate students with the ideology of the Democrat Party. In one case, Chief Education Officer of iCivics Emma Humphries suggested that educators should have their students come up with Democrat talking points for the impeachment of President Trump to counter Republican talking points. In 2016, Humphries heavily criticized President Trump in a post on "Teaching the Election," writing in her own "sample response" that Trump "plans to install a Putin-like dictatorship in America."
To understand how overtly partisan iCivics truly is, one need only follow the money. According to federal records, iCivics staffers have donated exclusively to Democrat politicians or Democrat political action committees over the past eight major election cycles since iCivics was founded. During that time, iCivics staff has bankrolled the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden for President, Obama for President, and ActBlue, a Democrat campaign fund.
But it wasn't just iCivics staff donating to the left. Extraordinarily, the Executive Director and leader of iCivics, Louise Dube, donated $100 to ActBlue on June 2, 2020, specifically earmarking her money with the direction to "Stop Republicans." Describing why she got into teaching civics, Dube once asserted that "we have been teaching civics primarily from one perspective, that of the white male." Dube hopes that civics is taught so that "we no longer gloss over systemic racism." On another occasion, Dube stated that "iCivics made a commitment to pointing out institutional systemic racism in teaching about our institutions. This will alienate some, but it is the moral imperative of today."
The staff at iCivics and CivXNow have not only exhibited overwhelming partisan bias in favor of Democrats, but iCivics staff also embrace educational concepts that closely align with the goals of progressive Democratic politics. For example, one of the dedicated purposes of CivXNow is to push "action civics" as an alternative to traditional civics education, urging teachers to downplay traditional content-based education and instead encourage student protests on behalf of political causes, which somehow virtually always turn out to be liberal.
Leaders of iCivics also back Critical Race Theory as a framework for studying civic engagement, attacking American institutions by claiming that they are "systemically racist" and "have not only failed to protect Black and Brown people but have too often made them targets by some of the very people whom we have entrusted to protect our lives." Some leaders of iCivics tout the New York Times' widely discredited 1619 Project as a true account of American history and, perhaps most egregiously, openly promote the Marxist concept of "equity" – as opposed to equality – as a central tenet of the organization.
More recently, iCivics has been working to instill a Common Core-like approach to American history teaching through its recently released "Educating for American Democracy (EAD) Roadmap & Report." The problem with American history teaching, according to iCivics, is that "[f]or much of American history, most schools presented U.S. history and civics largely from the perspective of white, Protestant, propertied men…Students can make it into their teens without knowing, for instance, that George Washington not only was a foundational leader but also enslaved people."
The Democrat party and leftist coalition led by iCivics is desperate to impose its vision of American history on the nation. Its national history curriculum content roadmap and report tells history teachers across the country what questions to ask their students, what themes to teach their students concerning American history, and even provides new definitions for key historical terms. The term "America," according to the iCivics led the report, is "[f]or many people," "a term of attachment." But "[f]or others, it has been a term of marginalization." Throughout its roadmap and report, iCivics uses "the phrase 'citizen and civic participant'" because, they say, "[a]n individual who is not born or naturalized in the United States may yet serve as a paragon of citizenship." The iCivics national content roadmap for history curriculum is designed to change state standards, increase federal control in history education, and create a framework for de facto national curriculum content standards on history and civics. In many ways, the iCivics roadmap appears to be a more significant violation of federalism than the original Common Core. The iCivics coalition wants to align the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the test often called "the nation's report card") with the EAD "Roadmap." This would be the quickest and easiest way to impose a de facto national curriculum on the nation's schools. States will be forced to teach from the same EAD curricular hymnal if they want to get federal grants.
Despite the efforts of Stanley Kurtz and a few others to highlight the pervasive influence of iCivics in education circles, you likely won't hear much from traditional media outlets about the group or the policies they've helped pass. Most Democrats and pundits understand that the ideas promoted by organizations like iCivics are hopelessly out of touch with what most Americans believe. If conservatives don't rise to confront the dangers of woke education soon, however, the long-term damage done to generations of young Americans may prove to be irreparable.
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Jorge L Rios
The reason all these communist organizations want to erase and rewrite our history is because they are not interested in learning anything from history, they are only interested in pushing their communist agenda in a disguise so people will not easily see who they realy are. One other main point is that THE DEMOCRATS have ALWAYS been the ones who commited all the atrocities in history, against blacks, minorities, etc., that they pretend to be so concerned about, so they want all those historical records erased and rewriten to align with their false made up narative (that it is all "white mens fault, and all white men are racist), rather than saying that it was the DEMOCRAT PARTY and its members that commited all those atrocities in history and now they are just trying to spread the blame but take the credit for beeing the "saviors" of all the downtroted.
Until republican's balance the news outlets, nothing will change and we will fall to this new government
James Jolly
We learn by history. Good things and bad thinbgs and hopefully learn from the bad history. These things that were bad should be a training tool not to be repeated. The Socialist government alone with big business and false news is the root cause. Look at North Korea that only tells the people what they want them to be trained in. Hopefully we will not be that stupid
Jegg
Students should learn the history of the USA, both negative (slavery, trail of tears etc) as well as the positive (Civil war to fight slavery, strides for equality of opportunity, etc) to correct past injustices. Those subjects must be explained in the context of the era; that while we abhor such issues today, there was a time when the world was more acceptable to those issues.
So basically the founding of the USA in the late 18th/early 19th century was an amazing event. That self governing, the concept of the US Constitution, may not have included every citizen/race at the time, we have achieved it today because of those learned men who debated to create the form of government we have.
The government we must fight to retain against the false narrative of the left.
Reply to Jegg
Very well put! Politics just doesn't belong in our schools, period. Actual facts are important.
P Fallon
As Stanley Kurtz' article outlines, this has a deep and convoluted history. Read about iCivics curriculum passage in Mass schools triggered by BObama's White House task force in 2012 of A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future and how it is isolating certain aspects of America's history and eliminating contemporaneous instances of slavery in other cultures (China, eg) so there is no ability for students to see these events in a larger context; instead America "invented" slavery. It's happening folks. And it's coming through academia – where all the hippies & misfits went after the Viet Nam war protests. That's when gender studies & womens studies became accepted degree programs. Sorry but they're winning. Think where this will take the country in 10, 20, 50 yrs.
Mario Capparuccini
It is sad that the Democrats, which have always been the party of slavery and racism, wants to use racist ideology such as critical race theory to combat racism. Democrats are not interested in helping people of color. Their only desire is to obtain and abuse political power. They are just like the communists of the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong's China. After all, they use their tactics and adhere to their strategies. Did not Obama extol the virtues of Saul Alinsky's Handbook for Radicals? The Democratic Party is the party of Satan. They lie all the time just like their father who Our Lord Jesus said was the Father of lies.
Reply to Mario Capparuccini
I suspect that "democrat party" is a misnomer. There surely are some real democrats but too many are socialists/communists in their beliefs. It's a shame that many cannot see that it truly was the democrat party that was for slavery and against the slaves being freed and being considered just regular people like the rest of the people. Guess they just haven't changed much.
Paula Gallo
History today no good bring back the old school.
Pat Jandacek
What is the matter with teaching the kids "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"? If they look like human beings, treat them as human beings!
Reply to Pat Jandacek
There is nothing wrong with that at all. I think we should start teaching our children that. Sadly, they are not learning it now.
We need to stick together to resist this communist takeover. Conservatives (real Americans) NEED TO GET INVOLVED. Don't wait for somwone elae to do it.
UNITED we can and will win just as we have in the past. We are on the side of right and good, true justice.
the real truth needs to be taught.
NWCitizen
As Tom Hanks noted in his editorial, most Americans had never hear of the massacre of the prosperous, black Greenwood district of Tulsa, whose 100th anniversary occurred on Memorial Day. The brutal massacre where a white mob reduced 35 SQ BLOCKS of Greenwood to rubble, even using the biplanes of the era to drop explosives, and 300 blacks were believed to be killed, was covered up for decades until recent years until people started to take an interest in it. That's what the traditional white washed history promoted by Republicans gives you.
Chuckiechan
Reply to NWCitizen
Well then, sell that to black kids, teach them to "Never let the white man hold you down", and "only fools and mules work", and dilute white culture by promoting the idea that "marriages for white people" as you walk away when your woman gets pregnant.
The "white racist world" has spent trillions trying to sell the idea that "you don't have to be poor if you stay in school and out of trouble", an idea rejected by a noisy, ungrateful 10%.
Bill on the Hill
Reply to Chuckiechan
A sad, inconvenient truth for the BLM's of the world…As stated on the BLM website & only very recently removed I might add, they advocate for the breakup of the " nuclear family. " Sound familiar? Drive into any major city's minority neighborhoods ripe with violence & mayhem, stirred up even further by BLM/ANTIFA & tell me what you see. DEFUNDED police depts., police officers themselves under attack from the very people they are trying to protect…The common denominator missing from these disaffected youth, a father in their lives…
Bill on the Hill… :~)
WindRunner80HD
Did Mr. Hanks also say how those "whites" were democrats? How the South was dominated by democrats at the time of the Tulsa Massacre the party of slavery Jim crow Segregation and yes the K.K.K. who was founded by yes democrat Nathan Bedford Forest? The Tulsa Democrat party on May 28 2021 stated how throughout the years democrats had those who represented racist views they were placed as committee members elected as officials at the national and state level and its documented in history were members in the K.K.K. who participated in the horrible Tulsa Massacre?
Murf Appling
This is a horrible blot on American history. It had very little, or even nothing, to do with Republican self government. It is a classic example of "Democracy" N action, which is "mob rule" without a system of "Check & Balances" & the "Republican Rule of Law". J Adams & J Madison (include G Washington) + A Hamilton emphasized over & over the dangers of "Democracy". Republican Self-Government demands "a moral & just citizenry". What took place N TUL OK 100 years ago was neither. Mistakes have taken place. Has America tried its best to rectify those mistakes? The answer must be "in the affirmative".
retiredMAJUSA
Groups like this are proliferating exponentially. They revel in their scientific and historical ignorance like a dog rolling in a dead thing. But it begs the question, who is funding these guys? It can't all be Soros.
I know the owners of Chik Fil A donated a million dollars to BLM, yet yesterday they were getting lambasted by the lgbtq folks. Stupid Cathy family (sole owners of chik fil a), too dumb to realize that you can only stall histrionic zealots. They're like the mafia, bribe 'em once and they'll just keep coming until you're broke and you're burning down your place for the insurance money.
The question stands; Who is financing these yahoos?
Chuck Saylor
It seems to me that if teachers wanted to teach history as it really was, they would do their own research on it rather than drink the tea they are being served. The critical race theory will only plunge this country deeper into prejudice. There were a lot of bad things during the younger years of our country but they aren't taught at all or are just lies. The students come out of school confused. How is that helping anything at all. Kids need to grow into honorable people but how can they be honorable when they don't even know what that is. How to be humble and understand it would be a far better lesson than who will be your enemy and why.
Reply to Chuck Saylor
This would be very difficult. Teachers would have to seek out primary source material which all history book authors and publishers should be doing when they compile a grade level book for school use. Unfortunately, many authors come out of the liberal left leaning colleges which now teach that most of the past history books are all wrong. In most public schools teachers are using books which have completely rewritten history which for the most part corrupts the right understanding of how and why our country was founded and what makes it the greatest and freest country on earth. Teachers simply do not have the time to find and research all that needs to be taught.
Reply to Brian Palmer
Would be nice if they could just go back in time when real history (both good and bad) was taught and use one of those books.
Adler Pfingsten
Within the next two weeks the idea the United States is "exceptional" will no longer be a mere idea but a proven fact; 1776 was the third and last direct intervention by the ineffable intellect and power that chose the title 'God" to provide instruction, Torah, to all mankind after Sinai and Yeshua.
The evidence is in the form of matrices spanning 6000 years fusing history, Judaic scripture and mathematics into an unmistakable message written across the tablet of time i.e. mathematical evidence the God of Sinai, Yeshua and 1776 exists.
They are judging and prosecuting leaders of the past, not by modern standards which is bad enough, but their own conceived standards which push a political agenda. I still don't believe that this is what the majority of voters wanted. The dems clearly cheated and stole the election, and are now doing everything in their power to silence any and all opposition. They are also using our strengths against us and our tax money to fund this. Hitler would be proud of them. You cannot change history, and any attempt to do so is not the work of God.
A very well written article about our educational system in America. I agree if the right does not find its voice soon. Traditional education will be a thing of the past and we will not be educating our children to survive in the world.
Judy M
Reply to Margaret
What members of Congress are fighting against this left-wing propaganda? Are there any Republican PACs or organizations fighting against this?
Reply to Judy M
Good question. Is there a way AMAC can help us identify congress people or PACs that are working AGAINST these issues? Pls publish for the woke members here!
RobinMD
I wonder if the group's programs include facts about the KKK and its relationship with the Democratic party.
It is abundantly clear, the genie was let out of the bottle the moment Donald J. Trump was elected in 2016. Trump most certainly interrupted the Marxist Democratic Party's ( 16 ) year plan on destroying America. ( 8 ) years under Hussein Obama & we see where it got us as a nation. The plan was for HRC to finish us off into her 2nd term, however, clearly they didn't see Trump coming. Turns out Mr. Trump did in fact become a " populist president " & a beloved president at that for all of the outstanding accomplishments that were done for America or We The people, all the while, whilst he & his family were under constant NON-STOP attack from all corners, including fellow Republicans, aka RINO's.. Now enter the fraudulent 2020 Presidential Election & the Democrats are now in FAST FORWARD mode making up for those LOST ( 4 ) years which brings us to this very moment in time.
We have been dealing with an anti-American form of civics education in some quarters for decades now & it is in fact spreading at a rapid rate as the above article alludes too.
I believe President Trump was keenly aware of this un-American style of education as he did in fact do an EO on the 1776 Commission which teaches our American history to our students correctly, warts & all only to have the election stolen from all of us & Biden scraps the 1776 Commission & replaces it with WOKE, i.e. the now infamous 1619 project along with CRT & many teachers unions fully on board with it, sadly enough… :~(
George Washington's Admirer
Reply to Bill on the Hill
Yes, sadly enough the Communists/Marxists/Democrats are working feverishly on their new curriculum. These studies include: 'Communist Manifesto' (Kids Edition), & 'The Little Engine That Was Held Back By Systemic Oppression So She Shouldn't Even Try': 'An Essential Life Lesson For Every Woke Child.' This is the type of brainwashing that children will have to endure. Yes, its sad, pathetic, and despicable!
Roadside signs => compare communist manifesto to libdem agenda vs conservative ideas !
Typical radical liberals, they always claim the moral high ground over everyone else. When in fact they are guilty sinners like the rest of us. But they think they know better and need to control others. The Apostal Paul says, "There is NONE good, all have sinned and have come short of the glory of GOD!
Reply to Duane
I was thinking the same thing the other day. In actuality, they are riddled with guilt because THEY have been running, controlling the inner-cities and cities were the majority of Black and Brown people live and it's been a hell of a FAILURE; AND with about 22 TRILLION DOLLARS being spent (on all social programs combined – HUD, SS, welfare, etc.) OVER THE LAST 55 years since LBJ and Dems got their "Great Society" social programs passed. LOTS of Dem politicians got rich, pundits and political and charitable organizations got rich…….Black and Brown people pretty much got screwed. TO BE FAIR, it's a very hard thing to tackle – inner-city and city poverty, but it does not help when Dem's "social justice signally" keeps them FROM EVER ADMITTING THAT THEY'VE MADE MANY MISTAKES AND ONLY GOD IS GOOD/PERFECT!!! For example: Welfare payments pulling the father out of the home, cuz it the payments ONLY went to fatherless /grandfatherless homes!
Reply to Katrina
"where", not "were". "signaling", not "signally".
Have to agree that black and brown got screwed and are still being screwed by corruption in the inner city governments and also by the democrat party. It's just not right!
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