‘Web page Not Discovered’: Academics Union Gained’t Clarify Why It Discarded Presidents Day Curriculum
The Nationwide Schooling Affiliation eliminated its sources on Presidents Day from its web sites in 2020, in line with a Day by day Sign evaluation of the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine. Three years later, the lecturers union nonetheless has not up to date the web page.
The sources, final saved on June 17, 2020, included lesson plans celebrating “the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, their contributions to america, and the lives and contributions of all our 45 Presidents.”
Presidents Day lesson plans included “George Washington: A Nationwide Treasure,” which celebrated Washington as an American hero, and “George Washington: Centerpiece of a Nation,” the place college students studied the traits that made the primary president an important chief.
Now, the Presidents Day sources web site yields a “Web page not discovered” consequence, as a substitute referring customers to NEA’s useful resource library. The library contains Black Historical past Month classes from Studying for Justice, the schooling department of the Southern Poverty Legislation Middle; a report on how lecturers can advocate for abortion companies; sources for instructing about Indigenous folks; an article about implicit racial bias; and posters, bookmarks, and stickers for celebrating “banned” books.
The NEA didn’t reply to The Day by day Sign’s request for remark.
The newest Nationwide Evaluation of Instructional Progress scorecard confirmed that scholar proficiency in U.S. historical past is getting worse. Solely 15% of eighth graders scored as proficient or above in U.S. historical past in 2018, a fall of 4 factors because the final evaluation in 2014. Just one-quarter of scholars confirmed proficiency in civics and geography.
The discarded webpage included classes on the Revolutionary Conflict, constitutional authorities, the Invoice of Rights, the Civil Conflict, and the Gettysburg Handle.
“As a result of George Washington led the Continental Military to victory within the American Revolution and was later elected to be the primary President, most Individuals and far of the world noticed him as an emblem of america,” a lesson for fourth to sixth graders reads. “To his countrymen on the time and within the opinion of many historians, George Washington’s function as President within the new federal authorities was essential to its success.”
The sources additionally included crafts for youngsters celebrating Washington’s birthday, video games, and quizzes.
The absence of data on U.S. historical past on the NEA web site is a part of a nationwide development of canceling American Founding Fathers.
America has seen a pointy decline in faculties named after presidents. In 1986, greater than 6,000 faculties have been named after a president. In 2020, that quantity dropped to 4,889, in line with a Heritage Basis report launched Friday on the decline of patriotically named faculties. (The Day by day Sign is the information outlet of The Heritage Basis.)
Greater than 63% of fogeys and virtually 74% of lecturers say civics schooling needs to be emphasised extra in faculties, in line with The Heritage Basis’s survey of lecturers and oldsters in 2021.
“The Nationwide Schooling Affiliation’s removing of content material on the nice former presidents of america would appear to point they not worth them as such or consider their concepts and examples in management advantage research by American tradition,” Richard Reinsch, director of the Middle for American Research at The Heritage Basis, informed The Day by day Sign. “That is regrettable, pathetic, and fairly frankly, anti-American.”
Have an opinion about this text? To pontificate, please electronic mail [email protected] and we’ll think about publishing your edited remarks in our common “We Hear You” characteristic. Keep in mind to incorporate the url or headline of the article plus your identify and city and/or state.
