Florida has created a new American history course that advances a more conservative interpretation of the nation\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
It focuses on the Protestant faith of the founders, argues that the U.S. Constitution is an antislavery document and recommends a textbook written explicitly to build patriotism.<\/p>\n
The class, which will roll out as a pilot program this fall, is meant to serve as an alternative to Advanced Placement U.S. History, a behemoth that reached more than half a million high school students last year.<\/p>\n
Many historians and educators say A.P. United States History is well balanced and avoids any single ideological interpretation of the American story.<\/p>\n
But Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a three-year battle against the College Board, the organization that runs the A.P. program. His administration has argued A.P. courses lean too far to the left in how they discuss race and gender, in particular.<\/p>\n
Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, said he found the new Florida framework rigorous, especially its emphasis on primary sources. In the ongoing debate about whether American history classes should lean more toward presenting the country as a \u201cgood, special place\u201d or as a \u201cfundamentally imperfect place,\u201d he added, the framework clearly comes down on one side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very explicit attempt to frame it as the former,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the ways the Florida course does that.<\/p>\n
It advances American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
The Florida class, whose framework was released on Monday, shares many similarities with other American history survey courses. It does not omit dark periods in the nation\u2019s history, such as slavery, Japanese internment or the Trail of Tears. It does suggest a specific textbook \u2014 \u201cLand of Hope\u201d by Wilfred McClay \u2014 that, according to Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, tends to cover such events as \u201caberrations from an otherwise admirable story,\u201d as opposed to part of a foundational history of racism.<\/p>\n
Professor McClay teaches at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian institution in Michigan. He has suggested<\/a> he wrote \u201cLand of Hope,\u201d in part, to counteract the influence of \u201cA People\u2019s History of the United States\u201d by Howard Zinn, a popular book that focuses on America\u2019s role in abuses of human and civil rights.<\/p>\n Professor McClay declined an interview for this article, but wrote in an email that he supported competition, and that \u201cthe College Board should not enjoy a monopoly on the certification of advanced placement in this country.\u201d He added that his work does not downplay \u201cracial inequality and prejudice and brutality in American history,\u201d but sees these moments as departures from \u201cour professed ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n The McClay book is not required for the Florida class, but it is the only suggested textbook. In comparison, the A.P. program provides a list of 21 suggested U.S. history textbooks, which does not include Professor McClay\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Both programs offer teachers significant autonomy in how to present individual lessons.<\/p>\n It focuses on Western civilization.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s course goes deep on the English constitutional roots of American democracy and contains a big dose of European history. It focuses especially on the ways in which the Protestant Reformation gave rise to certain democratic ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must teach our young people to become informed, self-aware and dedicated citizens of the United States of America \u2014 of this particular nation,\u201d the framework states. \u201cThat requires knowledge of the history of American civilization, as well as its deep roots in English and, more broadly, Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n Manisha Sinha, a historian at the University of Connecticut, noted that, in emphasizing Europe, the course framework offered little on American Indigenous history before European contact. She argued that this was a dated approach to U.S. history, \u201cespecially in a place like Florida, with a long history of Native presence and major encounters and wars.\u201d<\/p>\n It emphasizes the nation\u2019s Protestant religious heritage.<\/p>\n Ideas about liberty and equality from the Bible, and in the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin, were crucial precursors to the American founding, according to the new Florida framework. It suggests that students read religious texts, a practice that has fallen out of favor in most public schools.<\/p>\n Professor Zimmerman acknowledged that many of today\u2019s students, including his own, were unfamiliar with basic religious thought, which could make it difficult to understand the nation\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people were reading the Bible,\u201d he said of Puritan colonists, \u201cand if you don\u2019t understand what the Bible says, you can\u2019t understand them.\u201d<\/p>\n The framework stops short of explicitly calling the United States \u201ca Christian nation,\u201d which is a popular term on the right, Professor Zimmerman noted. The course does mention that the early United States was \u201ca Protestant nation with many denominations,\u201d in which rights were gradually extended to Catholics and Jews.<\/p>\n It argues the founders opposed slavery.<\/p>\n The Florida framework devotes an entire unit to a topic that has long fascinated Americans, but which is often skated over in history classes: the contradiction between the founders\u2019 stated antislavery beliefs and the fact that many of them owned other human beings.<\/p>\n But Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard historian and leading scholar of Thomas Jefferson, said that, in portraying the founders as fundamentally opposed to slavery, the framework simplified their views. She noted that Jefferson believed that if enslaved people were freed, they should be expatriated, and that George Washington waited until his death to free the enslaved people he owned.<\/p>\n \u201cEach of these people had political power that could have been deployed against slavery,\u201d she wrote in an email. \u201cThis presentation seems directed at explaining away their inaction.\u201d<\/p>\n The framework also argues that the Constitution is an antislavery document. Mainstream historians tend to see the Constitution as a compromise between slaveholding and free states, and one that protected the institution of slavery for many decades.<\/p>\n