When Texas Governor Gregg Abbott signed Texas HB 2497 into law in June of 2021, his first target was the DMV. But instead of combating agonizing wait times or the general inconveniences of driver services, Abbott may have actually made the DMV experience even worse — all thanks to the 1836 Project: a committee to promote “patriotic education,” partly through informational pamphlets given to individuals receiving new driver’s licenses. These pamphlets must contain information highlighting Texan values and iconic Texan histories, like the Texas War for Independence, Juneteenth, the indigenous people of the Texas land, and, with an unfortunate lack of irony, Texas’ “heritage of keeping and bearing firearms in defense of life and liberty and for use in hunting.”
Now, while mandatory pamphlets at the DMV may feel novel, the broader concept of patriotic education is certainly not, nor is it limited to Texas. Indeed, especially after the revival of racial tensions following George Floyd’s murder and recent talk of including critical race theory (CRT) in the classroom, “patriotic education” at large has become a nationwide conservative talking point.
As the United States debates how to approach its racial past (and present) in our education system, one thing is abundantly clear: we must approach it factually and apolitically. While “patriotic education” claims to highlight our nation’s bedrock values and commemorate American progress, it runs the risk of celebrating unfulfilled accomplishments and undermining ongoing injustice. Artificially injecting patriotism into our education system is therefore dangerous and has the potential to be inaccurate — if not revisionist. Ultimately, Texas House Bill 2497 and similar movements prove to be more problematic than patriotic.
To start, the term “patriotic education” itself feels like a red flag. Patriotic education programs are indeed used in other parts of the world, but they definitely aren’t parts of the world that Republicans like Abbott would want to emulate; China, for one. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) pro-communist patriotic education programs date back to 1994, when a post-Tiananmen Square CCP tried to regain tighter control over the country. These education requirements were again tightened in 2019 as new waves of Democratic movements sprung up in Hong Kong. Although China is just one example, the worldwide cohort of despotic leaders promoting patriotic education is indicative of their autocratic tilt and their states’ attempts to limit critical thought and restrict free academic inquiry. By enacting patriotic education in Texas, then, Governor Abbott is playing with fire.
To be fair, the Texas 1836 Project has yet to turn out any curriculum. Yet, fears that the project creates an opportunity to romanticize and revise true Texan history are still warranted. Indeed, while the bill does require mentions of indigenous people, Juneteenth, and more, it is yet to be seen how these events are discussed and just how wholly these pamphlets portray Texas’ racist, and otherwise inequitable, past. Given that, since the creation of the 1836 Project, Texas legislators have only further legislated classroom discussion of racism in the United States, the state certainly isn’t moving in a promising direction.
Patriotic education campaigns aren’t just taking hold in Texas, though — they’re seeping across the country. Many states, in largely Republican-led efforts, are attempting to legislate the way we talk about race and identity in the classroom. Most recently, these campaigns specifically respond to CRT and the New York Times’s 1619 Project, both of which examine United States history through the lens of slavery and its systemic present-day ramifications.
To concede, it’s true that while the 1619 Project has been critically acclaimed, winning such accolades as the Pulitzer Prize, historians have not universally approved of its centering of slavery in the founding and history of America. Even so, conservative reactions to including race in education are unnecessarily divisive and deliberately misleading. Take Tucker Carlson, for example, who claims that CRT teaches kids to hate the U.S. and to judge each other based on skin color. At face value, Carlson’s reporting would prompt anyone to be wary of such an “ideology.” But when you take the time to read what CRT actually is, you see that Carlson isn’t reporting at all: he’s fear-mongering.
As critical analyses like CRT have taken the stage, Republicans have been pushing “patriotic education” as a direct rebuttal; it is no coincidence that Texas’s 1836 Project is titularly parallel to the New York Time’s 1619 Project. Consequently, even things as quotidian as school board meetings, normally on the periphery of the average citizen’s radar, have become racial battlegrounds.
At a June 14th school board meeting in my hometown district — Independent School District 196 in Minnesota — a white freshman spoke to the school board about feeling “uncomfortable” as the principal of his school was giving “condolences […] to other races and leaving just one race out,” as if his school was “punishing” him for his skin color. The freshman also felt that teachers were pushing “leftist” ideology, and that, as a conservative, he didn’t feel safe in his learning environment. Attendees cheered in his support as he left the podium.
Such dialogue, although disheartening and vitriolic, gravely misrepresent racial realities in their content. And while statements that teachers tend to lean liberal do have merit, the idea that schools are pushing leftist ideology through their curricula does not. In truth, schools have frequently accommodated right-leaning concerns. In 2015, for instance, backlash from conservative public officials prompted the College Board to change their original AP United States History (APUSH) outline to add discussion of American Exceptionalism, among other edits.
The status quo of the American education system is not leftist. It is not anti-American, or anti-white, or anti-democracy. Rather, it is favorable to our history. It is celebratory of the Constitution and appreciative of the progress that we have made. It acknowledges the faults in our nation’s past, but also acknowledges what we have done to fix them.
By claiming that American education is indoctrinating students with liberal ideas, conservatives are pushing a false narrative that, in turn, enables them to indoctrinate students with their own conceptions and agenda. The Texas 1836 Project, or the recent developments in Florida, in which students and staff at public universities will have to register their political beliefs in order to maintain “viewpoint diversity,” are perfect examples of this trend.
It is, however, important to draw a distinction between Republican-branded “patriotic education” and a genuine academic emphasis on civic engagement and government. I am by no means attempting to suggest we should not teach the importance of civic engagement and education: both are absolutely necessary to sustain democracy. However, we must not, under the guise of “patriotism”, use civic education as a vehicle to neglect the ugly side of our history.
Ultimately, the role of our education system is to teach students to dive into and think critically about the problems that society faces. This will not happen if the state is pushing a heroized version of its history. What’s more, we should not have to teach patriotism. It should be a byproduct of a successful, just and equitable country. If we must teach national pride, it implies that we are living in a nation where that pride may not occur organically. So, instead of approaching education as a vessel for faux patriotism, let’s use it to build an informed citizenry that acknowledges and learns from our history to solve today’s most pressing challenges. And, in doing so, let’s create a country that will make us proud, one that warrants authentic patriotism — no strings or hidden agendas attached.
Image is licensed under the Unsplash License and edited by Amen Gashaw ’24
