Iowa Republicans promise a fair and balanced teaching of US history.

Will Iowa parents accept the new politically correct curriculum?

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

Republicans in the Iowa Legislature say they don’t want politics in your kid’s classroom. But that’s not true. They don’t mind politics in your kid’s classroom—as long as it’s their politics.

The proof was in full view Wednesday night in the Iowa House.

First, Republicans passed a bill that would force Iowa schools to show a fetal development video similar to the “Baby Olivia” video produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action, which the Washington Post says opposes abortion in all cases. The video, which is making the rounds of Republican-friendly legislatures, has been called inaccurate by medical groups.

Then, the House passed a history and civics bill that would force teachers to adopt curriculum that was copied, in large part word for word, from a rightwing education alliance.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. The curriculum in HF2544 (formerly HF2330) is carefully selected. The authors emphasize certain people and parts of US history, while ignoring others. It demands teaching the “civic virtues” of Ronald Reagan but doesn’t mention Franklin Roosevelt. It requires teaching the benefits of free enterprise and the failings of the economic systems of communist regimes. But it is silent about the flaws of capitalism. It mandates teaching about several wars in US history but doesn’t list the Vietnam War.

It cites two dozen Americans exemplifying civic virtues, but only two women are on the list.

The last document on the reading list was written 160 years ago.

The bill doesn’t mention Jim Crow laws at all.

Legislative Republicans had no answers to this kind of critique during debate Wednesday night, even as they insisted the teaching of history in Iowa schools would be fair and balanced.

What’s more important is they had no answers to the very practical concerns educators have expressed about how to implement this plan.

The Iowa Council for the Social Studies pointed out the bill’s requirements would leave no room for the study of geography, sociology or other social studies electives. The council also said the prescribed menu of readings is so extensive it would only allow kids to scratch the surface, and that some of the material is beyond the comprehension of many students.

Consider just the introduction to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which is one of the works 5th and 6th graders will be required to study:

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England had undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.

Think your kid will understand that? Will it inspire him or her to want to learn more?

It’s true this is only the opening to “Common Sense,” but as the American Historical Association said in a letter to Iowa House members, “even the brightest fifth graders will struggle to comprehend” Paine's work.

Yet, our legislators believe they know better than your kid’s teacher.

Perhaps just as importantly, the AHA points out that the Republican legislation stomps on the process that former Gov. Terry Branstad set up in 2013 so that neither “the federal government or any other organization” would determine Iowa’s academic standards. Instead, Branstad (with Kim Reynolds as the lieutenant governor) signed an executive order putting in place a system for developing state standards, while leaving decisions related to curriculum to local school districts.

At the very heart of this process are Iowa educators and everyday Iowans.

In fact, it was nearly seven years ago that the state board of education adopted new social studies standards. I’d like to think that Gov. Reynolds has enough respect for the members of the board not to let some out-of-state think tank just obliterate their work.

The thing is, I tend to agree with the idea that Iowa’s education standards don’t have enough content. It seems to me that if the governor agrees with her GOP colleagues in the Legislature and wants further revision, she could encourage members of the board, many of whom she appointed, to move in this direction using the process that was set up 10 years ago.

As I study the debate over the merits of an inquiry-based approach to history and civics versus a more content-based method, my middle-aged brain thinks we need more traditional content. But I concede I’m not a professional educator. I love reading history, but I don’t know how to teach it or inspire kids to learn it.

There are professionals who do this, with the input of Iowans from across the spectrum. Which is exactly the process the Branstad/Reynolds administration set up with Executive Order 83 a decade ago. And that’s exactly what House Republicans, through the raw use of their political power, voted to toss out the window Wednesday evening.

Like I said, Republicans in the Iowa Legislature frequently complain about educators injecting politics into the classroom. But they don’t mind one bit shoving their own politics down your kid’s throat. The question is, do you?

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