New pro-American history standards stress the evils of communism

Ken Burns' series, The American Revolution is magnificent, writes John McWhorter in the New York Times.

Conservative critics call the series "a woke mockery" ruined by "antihistorical woke nonsense." McWhorter writes. He concedes that Burns exaggerates the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the founding fathers. "Join or Die" was an obvious idea, he writes, and the founders, "steeped in classical treatises on government," didn't learn about democracy from the Iroquois. But it's only a small part of the series.

It's not "woke" to show black people were part of Colonial America in the North as well as the South, he writes. "American militia facing the British around Boston in 1775 was the most integrated one in this country until after World War II. Nearly one-tenth of the soldiers at Valley Forge were Black."

"The overarching message of this series is the founders’ pioneering anti-monarchical ideology and the horrors endured by those who fought for these ideals," he writes. Burns shows the "contradiction between the founders’ insistence on their liberty and their comfort in keeping Black people in bondage," but the goal is not to "shame the the nation or perform his own moral superiority," McWhorter concludes. “The American Revolution is intelligently self-critical history of a kind most people worldwide are deprived of."

Florida teachers will add lessons about the evils of Communism, writes Sarah Schwartz in Education Week. Thirty pages of "communism-specific standards span grades 6-12."

The state board of education in Texas has adopted a framework for new history standards "that devotes more course time to Texas history, and frames the founding of the United States and Texas as 'the noblest experiment',” she writes. Other conservative states also want schools to teach that American is a role model for the world, not a bastion of white supremacy.

Of course, 2026 will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, an entire year to argue about America.