When it comes to the new school curriculum in Pennridge, let the students decide

One side says we should teach students about America’s greatness, instead of harping on our history of racism. The other side says we should teach about that awful history, instead of simply praising America as great.

What if we did both?

That’s not something we’ve heard during the angry shouting matches in the Pennridge School District, which recently adopted a curriculum inspired by the ultraconservative Hillsdale College. As a historian, I share critics’ concern that the curriculum exaggerates our national virtues and whitewashes our misdeeds. But as an educator, I also know that students learn best when they’re confronted with contrasting points of view.

That’s why Pennridge should present the new curriculum alongside the old one, and let students sort things out on their own.

The battle in Pennridge is part of a broader culture war that exploded in 2020, with the police murder of George Floyd. School districts across the country resolved to fight racism and promote equity, often by reframing their history curricula around the oppression suffered by minority populations. That prompted GOP-led state legislatures to pass measures prohibiting instruction that suggests America is a racist country, or that some people (read: whites) should feel “discomfort, guilt, or anguish” about it.

Let’s leave aside the irony of Republicans seeking to protect fragile young psyches, even as they mock left-leaning “snowflakes” for their psychological fragility. The biggest problem is that the GOP wants to imprint a singular and rosy historical narrative upon a diverse and fractured nation.

Addressing the Moms for Liberty national convention in Philadelphia this summer, the right-wing consultant hired by Pennridge described his work as “the fox in the henhouse.” The “other side” — namely, liberals — has controlled schools for a century, Jordan Adams claimed. Now it was time to remake schooling on behalf of “our side,” he added. “We have one chance at this,” Adams told the convention. “It’s a do-or-die moment.”

A Hillsdale graduate who taught at a charter school affiliated with the college, Adams has also said he wants to prevent bias — and promote critical thinking — in the classroom. But he and his supporters have their own biases, of course, starting with their belief in American exceptionalism. “Can’t we all agree that history is fundamental and the United States is the greatest country in the world?” one citizen who favors the new curriculum asked at a Pennridge school board meeting.

No, we can’t agree on that. We disagree — deeply and fundamentally — about America. But we’re afraid to admit that when the kids are in the room. We talk a good game about critical thinking, then we try to impose our own thoughts — and to prohibit criticism — in the classroom.

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And that includes people on the left, not just on the right. After Buffalo adopted the New York Times’ “1619 Project” — which tells the story of America through the lens of slavery and racism — a city school leader said that criticism of the curriculum was “just another form of oppression.” She also decreed that any teacher who wanted to question it in class would need official permission first.

In Arizona, meanwhile, an educator said her school district had adopted materials from “The 1619 Project” so that students would learn the real story of America, not the mythical version. “If we want to create a better society of young people and problem solvers and future leaders, they do have to understand and know America’s truth and what it was built on,” she declared.

Please. If we really wanted to educate a new generation of problem solvers, we wouldn’t try to solve America’s problems for them. Instead, we’d share different perspectives so that each student could come to their truth, which might not be yours or mine.

The best educators have always done that. In the 1980s, when Howard Zinn’s left-wing People’s History of the United States became a best-seller, teachers asked students to compare it to their state-approved textbook. More recently, they have had students compare “The 1619 Project” to the report by the 1776 Commission, which was convened by the Trump administration as a rejoinder to the New York Times’ curriculum.

Pennridge could do something similar, if it chose. Teachers could show students clips of Jordan Adams defending his curriculum and of opponents condemning it. They could assign excerpts of the texts Adams endorses alongside the ones he wants to replace.

But in a culture war, most people don’t want inquiry; they want victory. It’s do or die, remember? Nothing will change until Americans of every mind agree to let our future citizens make up their own minds — about America, and everything else.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools,” which was published in a 20th-anniversary revised edition last year by University of Chicago Press.