FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS: “1776 Unites Curriculum Highlights the American Character.”
Teachers looking for a history and civics curriculum that focuses on America’s promise of securing liberty for all have a new resource: the 1776 Unites curriculum. A creation of 1776 Unites, an initiative of the Woodson Center focused on reviving American education and culture, the curriculum embraces the “ideas of family, faith, and entrepreneurship that have enabled all Americans – including black Americans – throughout history to move from persecution to prosperity.”
As 1776 Unites members wrote in an open letter to the National School Boards Association and local school boards, the curriculum “offers authentic, motivating stories from American history that show what is best in our national character and what our freedom makes possible even in the most difficult circumstances.”
According to entrepreneur and civil rights leader Bob Woodson, it tells stories of “black Americans who seized their own destinies and flourished despite the harsh restrictions imposed by true institutional racism in the form of slavery and Jim Crow.”
The curriculum currently features 15 units for high school students on black entrepreneurs and philanthropists such as Biddy Mason, Elijah McCoy, and Paul Cuffe; athletes such as Jesse Owens and Alice Coachman; and important events from American history such as the Tulsa race massacre. Woodson says that the units released so far have purposefully “covered multiple lesser-known stories of black excellence and resilience from history.”
Access to the curriculum, which has already been downloaded over 20,000 times, is free with registration at the 1776 Unites website. Each unit contains a wealth of resources including lesson plans, primary sources, questions for classroom discussion, a Power Point presentation, multiple-choice questions, learning standards, and more. A curriculum for K-8 students will be released soon.
Woodson notes that most school curricula have been traditionally “short on inspiring stories of black achievement.” Instead, as seen with the New York Times’s 1619 Project, “the narrative of racial grievance has been corrupting the instruction of American history and the humanities for many decades – and has accelerated dangerously over the past year.” Woodson continues: “The most damaging effects of such instruction fall on lower income minority children, who are implicitly told that they are helpless victims with no power or agency to shape their own futures.”
For this reason, the 1776 Unites curriculum “maintains a special focus on stories that celebrate black excellence, reject victimhood culture, and showcase African-Americans who have prospered by embracing America’s founding ideals.”
This Mike Sabo fellow is doing excellent work as the editor RealClear’s American Civics portal.
MORE FROM MIKE SABO. America would be a better place if he were in charge of the nation’s curriculum but for the fact that EdWatchDaily does not support government education! Still, I’d send my future grandkids to a private school run by Mr. Sabo: “Educating Students about the Victims of Communism.”