October 1st, 2020 | Written By - Katherine Cassesse '21
For the past few years, there has been renewed discussion in the news about schools being ‘too political.’ President Trump has decried teaching about topics that are critical of the United States and has said, “American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools.” Among his targets is the New York Times’ 1619 project -- named for the year when slaves were first brought to the United States -- which emphasizes the large role slavery played in America’s founding. In September, Trump established the 1776 Commission for Patriotic Education, a name that references the founding of the United States and replies to the New York Times’ project.
The United States is not the only country where facts are contentious. In Poland, it is a civil offense to accuse the Polish state of complicity in the Holocaust; phrases such as “Polish death camp” to refer to Auschwitz are not allowed under this law. Poland suffered a brutal German occupation during World War II, were seen as racially inferior by the Germans, and over two million non-Jewish Poles died, most as soldiers or in death camps. The exiled government worked to aid Polish Jews, and more Christian Poles than any other group have been recognized as Righteous Among Nations by Israel for risking their lives to stop the murder of Jews. All of this is the history that Poland prefers to remember, and some -- mostly far-right protestors in Poland -- go so far as to say the Polish loss is equal to or greater than the Jewish loss.
But there is more to the story. Poland was incredibly anti-semitic, and some Polish towns murdered Jews without Nazi participation; in the town of Jedwabne, Polish residents burned alive hundreds of Jewish inhabitants in a barn. 90% of the Jews in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust and for those who survived, Poland was not a safe home: pogroms in the town of Kielce and elsewhere murdered Jews in the years after the war.
Thus the role of Poland is complicated in the Holocaust, but the gag rule reflects a current in Polish culture and government that refuses to acknowledge its past wrongs. For example, in response to an interviewer saying that in the aforementioned Jedwabne “Poles burned Jews in a barn,” the Education Minister of Poland said it was “a matter of opinion.”
The situation in the United States seems less extreme because the federal government has limited control over education, and also because making speech illegal is an escalation from neglecting to teach it. Here, state governments have control over what material is taught. The federal government provides 8% of all K-12 education funding and can use this as an incentive for states to follow federal guidelines for schools, though they are prohibited from telling schools what to teach by current law. Despite this, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) has proposed a law that would prevent the use of federal dollars to teach the 1619 project because "the entire premise of the New York Times' factually, historically flawed 1619 Project ... is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that.”
I firmly object to Senator Cotton’s thinking. First, he is problematizing the telling of American experiences because he cannot accommodate them into what he believes our nation and its history to be about. If one believes that the American legacy is one of liberty and opportunity, but silences experiences of slavery and racial terror because one’s perspective cannot accommodate them, then that perspective is nonsense; our perspectives should not need to hide from the truth. In all fairness, there is conflict among historians about the project. But I am putting aside that question and responding to other claims of Cotton. Second, the 1619 project never calls America “irredeemable,” and Cotton should not conflate an analysis of current America as “systemically racist [at its root]” with a fatalistic declaration of irredeemability. In fact, reckoning with the problems of the United States is crucial to fixing its problems: we must end injustices that are currently occurring, acknowledge the severity of the wrongs done, and commit ourselves to a better future. To pretend the United States is perfect is not patriotism; it’s giving up on a more perfect union.
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