A Virginia education bill misstated a basic fact about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 2 years ago • 19 commentsBy: Christina Cauterucci (Slate Magazine)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A bill would require Virginia students to learn about "the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass." Somehow, that isn't even the worst part.
By Christina CauterucciJan 15, 20225:45 AM Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews/Slate. Photos by Cool10191/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain and George Kendall Warren/Wikipedia.
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The right-wing fight to suppress the teaching of uncomfortable truths in public schools reached a comical new low this week in a Virginia bill that blatantly misstated a basic fact about U.S. history.
Wren Williams, a 33-year-old Republican, pre-filed the bill on Tuesday, the day before he was sworn in as a new member of the Virginia House of Delegates. It proposed a new standard for regulating high-school social studies curricula in the state, including a requirement that students learn about "the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass."
This was a clear misunderstanding of the 1858 "Lincoln-Douglas debates," in which Steven Douglas, a then-sitting senator from Illinois—not Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist—faced off against Abraham Lincoln on the issue of slavery.
Naturally, Williams was dragged online for the on-the-nose error, which seemed to prove exactly why censorious legislators should not be entrusted with the teaching of historical facts.
But on Friday, the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, a nonpartisan government agency that formats and edits drafts of legislation, claimed responsibility. The error "was inserted at the drafting level, following receipt of a historically accurate request from the office of Delegate Wren Williams," according to a statement from the division.
The Douglas-Douglass mix-up will surely be corrected before the bill comes up for debate. But the bill also includes deliberate attempts to censor teachers and reshape the facts of U.S. history to flatter white men—the sorts of provisions Republican lawmakers have been advancing in state legislatures across the country in a manufactured panic over the supposed teaching of critical race theory. (In November, Virginia ousted its Democratic governor in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin, who made the issue a pillar of his campaign.)
The Virginia bill would prohibit instructors from teaching that the U.S. is "systemically racist or sexist" or that "the ideology of equity of outcomes is superior to the ideology of equality…of opportunities." It would also ban school boards from hiring anyone "with the job title of equity director or diversity director or a substantially similar title."
Williams cribbed most of his bill, including the part that refers to "the first Lincoln-Douglas debate," from a law that passed in Texas last fall. Both bills include a provision even more disturbing than the swapping of Steven Douglas for Frederick Douglass: one that prohibits school boards from requiring teachers to cover any current event or "controversial issue of public policy or social affairs." Teachers that choose to do so must represent multiple competing viewpoints on the issue, "without giving deference to any one perspective."
That's perhaps not so worrying in theory. But for a vision of how this law might be applied in practice, look to Texas, where a school administrator said it required that students have access to "opposing" perspectives on the Holocaust. In a hearing over a similar bill in Indiana that would prevent teachers from attempting to reveal or affect a student's "attitudes, habits, traits, opinions, beliefs, or feelings," a Republican state senator said that educators should be "impartial" when teaching about Nazism and fascism.
When criticized for their statements, both the Texas school district and the Indiana legislator apologized. But their alarming directives were fair interpretations of the state laws as written. If a teacher must take an impartial "both sides" stance on every current event or controversy, she will be forced to give credence to some truly ghastly viewpoints. How will she teach about the mass detention of Uighurs in China? The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville? The Jan. 6, 2021 assault on Congress
A decade ago, we might have assumed that a violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the presidential election would not be a controversial issue with two politically mainstream sides to unpack. We would have been wrong. Williams, the author of the Virginia bill, set aside his law practice for two months in 2020 to help Donald Trump challenge the vote count in Wisconsin. Who knows what current seemingly-universally-despised ideology will be up for debate a few years down the road?
Most social studies teachers will end up covering who the president is at some point in their classes (and also, whether certain incumbents win or lose their re-election campaigns). If Williams and his ilk take charge of the curriculum, it wouldn't be hard for them to require an ambivalent stance on that bit of U.S. history, too.
At this moment in time, it's unlikely that teachers in Texas and other states with propagandist curriculum laws will be forced to cover Nazism as a value-neutral political ideology. But these laws will have an immediate chilling effect on educators, who may be justifiably scared to discuss historical events (and what we can learn from them) for fear of losing their jobs.
It's not just unflattering facts about the Founding Fathers that Republicans are trying to keep out of public schools. It's critical thinking itself.
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There are whites, mainly conservatives, who do not want children taught that many whites have been racist throughout the history of the United States. On the basic level it IS that simple.
Here's a little gem from the Texas law:
I for one would be very interested in what the Texas legislature expressed for why they chose to single out two female slaves, for which there is NO documented original writings, and both of whom we only know through the words of others [white]. In reality, both women were obscure figures at the time, and neither can be remotely considered a 'founding person/mother'.
It seems to me that the ONLY reason the Texas Legislature threw in Ona Judge and Sally Hemings is to give a false sense of racial and gender equity.
Here's another gem:
WTF are the Texas Legislature smoking and WHO are they trying to fool with this ridiculous proclamation? How the fuck can they cite Washington and Jefferson as founding fathers and then try to pretend that slavery and racism weren't founding American values. It's utterly obtuse.
Both men were slave holders and racists. PERIOD, full stop.
Jefferson raped Sally Hemings and fathered multiple children with her, which he too enslaved.
Washington set up a scheme with his secretary to secretly 'rotate' slaves between Virginia and Pennsylvania to ensure that none of his or Martha's slaves would qualify for freedom under Pennsylvania's Emancipation law. When Ona Judge escaped from 'the Presidential mansion' and went to New Hampshire, Washington tried to get her to return and when that failed, he tried to have her kidnapped, TWICE.
It's pretty obvious that the Texas legislature is utterly tone deaf.
They want a purity to be recognized as the founding principles of the nation.
They want to keep the origin story of the US as a one track story - "freedom".
But most of all they dont want it known to their children that there has never been a time in the 240 year history of the country when racists were in a minority.
I REALLY want to deny and refute that statement John. Alas, I can't. The more overtly 'tribal' we become; the more race has become an accepted divisor.
So he had a bill 'pre-filed' even before he was sworn in.
No one could tell me he isn't bought and paid for.
So there was a typo?
Mistaking Frederick Douglas for Steven Douglas is not a typo, it is historical ignorance.
At the very least.
a typo made by some low level bureaucrat is not evidence of much of anything. Who knows what that anonymous typist was thinking when they made the copying mistake?
So then it is your contention that the writers of the bill didn't write it and no one proof reads anything...
“The Virginia Division of Legislative Services, a nonpartisan government agency that formats and edits drafts of legislation, claimed responsibility.”
I seriously doubt they changed a name...
Why would they lie? Why would a non partisan bureaucracy engage in a gigantic conspiracy over a typo?
Sometimes a typo is a just a typo.
Completely changing a name is not a typo.
Jesus, why won't you all just accept the freaking TRUTH?
JR's own article points it out for you all:
I wish progressive liberals would just stop with all their crazy conspiracy theories.
It's childish and makes them look so foolish.
Why not worry about something meaningful?
The article really isnt about the one instance where someone misrepresented who debated Abraham Lincoln. It is about the Virginia legislatures desire to whitewash history.
Oh, so what the story led with was just to get attention?
I didn't say that the article was only about one thing.
But since the post I responded TO was talking about a typo or an error that will be corrected, and that has already been acknowledged, my post was perfectly on topic.
Thanks.
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