Restrictive education laws raise concern of how March on Washington will be taught

As the nation commemorates the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, an event that called for freedom and opportunity for Black Americans, controversy around education standards has raised concern about how this historical moment will be taught in schools.

Over the past year, states have passed legislation that limits what aspects of Black history can be taught in schools, from slavery to racism and civil rights. These new laws have left advocates worried over whether the March on Washington will be taught at all.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been part of the fight for civil rights since he was a teenager, told The Hill that efforts to suppress the learning of Black history is an endeavor to inhibit progress. 

“I never thought I would see a time that people would celebrate trying to erase and edit history,” Sharpton said. “We need to tell people that despite the fact we were chattel slaves, we were able to struggle and get to a Black president. That can be a glorious story, but you take the glory out of the story when you want to take the pain and the suffering out. … Anytime you have an edited story, you underestimate the intellect and ability of the American people to understand our growth.”

The new school year has kicked off with a spate of bans on books, many of which discuss Black history or were written by Black authors and touch on racism, slavery and Black identity. Proponents of the bans argue these books and the history they tell could be construed as violent and divisive.

In February, PEN America reported that 50 education gag orders on race were introduced in 16 states, with 34 orders focused on K-12 schools, four focused on colleges and universities, and 12 that targeted both. 

Many of these gag orders borrowed language from an executive order by former President Trump that created a list of “divisive concepts” that could not be taught in federal training programs. Though this order was revoked by President Biden, language limiting teachings that could make a student feel “discomfort,” “anguish” or “guilt” has been included in many of the gag orders.

Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, said he’s “grievously worried about what’s going on” in Republican-controlled states like Florida and Texas, where he argues “they are trying to impose a Republican orthodoxy on the teaching about civil rights and race in America.” 

“This orthodoxy says you can’t teach that there are still lingering effects of discrimination. You can’t teach that discrimination is still embedded in things like health care, education, housing, law enforcement and other areas,” Lichtman said.

“Not because there’s a body of scholarship which says that. Quite the opposite. There is no such body of scholarship and the vast consensus of scholarship is: There are lingering effects of discrimination. Everything was not solved in the 1960s. And discrimination is still embedded in every important institution in this country,” he added. 

Florida has come under heavy fire for its educational laws. At the start of this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American studies, arguing its content is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”

Then, in June, the state’s Board of Education approved new standards for teaching African American history, including a rule directing teachers to instruct on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The standards drew swift scrutiny, and Vice President Harris has been vocal in her rebuke of the Sunshine State, accusing “extremists in Florida” of pushing “propaganda” on children to soften the harsh realities of slavery.

“Adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world,” Harris has said in her criticism of the standards. She’s also called it “ridiculous to have to say … that enslaved people do not benefit from slavery.”

Lichtman said Florida’s new curriculum on Black history is “profoundly distorted,” taking particular issue with the line about skills. The workgroup behind the new standards provided examples of enslaved people who purportedly acquired beneficial skills — but those examples erroneously included people who were never enslaved, Lichtman pointed out. 

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a July statement that the Sunshine State’s standards are “an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected.”

Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, also accused DeSantis of “pursuing a political agenda guaranteed to set good people against one another, and in the process he’s cheating our kids.”

But DeSantis, who is running for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, has defended his state’s education standards. And he accused the vice president of crafting a “fake narrative” about the curriculum and invited her to Tallahassee to discuss the matter, an invitation Harris publicly refused.

But Florida isn’t the only state to come under fire. Just two days before the school year was supposed to start this month, the Arkansas Department of Education said it would not recognize the AP African American studies course — even as AP European studies remains available for credit.

Surviving members of the Little Rock Nine expressed their disappointment in the state’s decision, while some school districts — including the Little Rock School District — will continue to offer the course. 

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) said it supports the incorporation of African American history standards broadly, but argued it’s “deeply concerned by the substance, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of this strand” and sounded the alarm about the negative impact on students and teachers.

“The gerrymandering of curriculum is quite troubling,” said Ashley Rogers Berner, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, speaking broadly of history education in America and arguing that it’s not taught “at all efficiently” in this country and lamenting politicization of history teaching on both sides of the aisle. 

“Multiple perspectives is not the same as indoctrination,” she said. 

“That’s not indoctrination, that’s exposure. If you’re in a heavily right-wing community, teachers need to present the left-wing side for their student to look at, examine. Likewise, if you’re in a blue state, you need to have your teachers bring you the best of … a reasoned, conservative viewpoint. It’s part of being an educated person,” Rogers Berner said. 

Even as some states are cracking down on teaching this bleak aspect of American history, others are finding ways to grapple with the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. 

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), the nation’s third elected Black governor and the state’s first, said his state is being “intentional” in reconciling with its dark history.

“Our history is our strength. Our history is our foundation, our history is the thing that reminds us every single day that nothing is impossible, that no matter what it is that we are facing, you can look back at your history and understand both as a nation, but also for African Americans and people of color,” Moore said. 

“There’s this excuse that’s being made that, oh, we’re doing it because we don’t want students to feel discomfort, or we don’t want students to feel guilt,” Moore continued. “That’s not true. It’s not that they don’t want certain students feeling guilt, it’s that they don’t want all students feeling empowered. Because when you know your history, nothing intimidates you.”

Moore was straightforward about Maryland’s painful history with Black Americans. His state had been the home of powerful Black Americans over the years — including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall.

But, Moore said, Maryland is also the home of discriminatory housing and transportation policies, the battle of Antietam and violent lynchings throughout the post-Civil War era.

“It’s a burden that we have in the state of Maryland that I know is not unique to the state of Maryland,” Moore said. “Our history is complicated, and it’s a complicated history of a state and a complicated country when it comes to the issue of race relations and economic growth.”

“When you know your history, nothing intimidates you. I don’t flinch, and I don’t flinch because I know my history,” Moore added.