South Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill who would use ex-President Trump’s 1776 report to help develop the U.S. history curriculum for elementary and high school students, WCSC reports.
The Restore America Foundation Act would require the South Carolina State Superintendent of Education to “review and prescribe appropriate texts and online materials in line with the principles and concepts in the January 2021 report of the 1776 Commission”
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South Carolina state senator Dwight Loftis (R) sponsored the legislation.
“In today’s society, we have a lot of disrespect for the flag, the national anthem and that kind of thing,” said Loftis, according to WCSC. “The knowledge of where we came from and why our ancestors did what they did, I think it is important that we know.”
The proposed legislation also requires a minimum of 30 hours of classroom instruction on the history of the United States each year for students in grades 6 through 12.
Trump established the 1776 Commission in an apparent response to The New York Times Magazine’s Project 1619, which focused on the country’s history of slavery and racism. The ex-president stated that Project 1619 taught students to “hatred his own country ”and commissioned his 1776 Commission to release a report to promote a“patriotic education” at Schools.
O report, which was released on Martin Luther King, Jr., criticized critical racial theory and countered criticism that the founders were “hypocrites” for defending slavery.
The Trump administration called the report a “definitive chronicle of the American foundation” and a “rebuttal of reckless attempts at ‘re-education’ that seek to reshape American history around the idea that the United States is not a country of exception, but of the bad . ”
“Historical revisionism … overrides honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors and teaches allegations of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by further discrimination, it is an ideology that seeks to more manipulate opinions than educating minds, ”states the report.
The report was severely criticized by historians and civil rights groups, and President Biden signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration, rescinding the 1776 Commission. The Biden-Harris transition team earlier this year accused the commission of trying to “delete America’s history of racial injustice. ”
Loftis told WCSC that the focus of the legislation is more on the foundation documents, not entirely on the report. State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said she supports the bill, since most of the concepts in the report are already being taught in schools, the vehicle said.
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