What did you learn in school today?

 What did you learn in school today?

 

There is an old folk song that begins, “what did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?”   It seems that in spite of Trump’s threat to withhold funding from California if it begins teaching a new curriculum called the 1619 Project Curriculum, he can’t.  There is a federal law that forbids the federal government-including the president and/or Congress- from meddling in a school’s choice of curriculum.  It is that simple.  Curriculum is a local decision.

The New York Times developed a history curriculum of the same name that California has chosen to adopt.  Trump has also threatened that the U.S. Office of Education “look into this too” with the threat of more federal funds being taken away from California.

The 1691 Project argues that the United States doesn’t originate in 1776 the year of the Declaration of Independence but instead originated in 1619, the year the first Africans were brought to this continent and enslaved.   The project then traces the impact of slavery on all of the country’s founding principles.   The curriculum can be adapted for all grade levels.

Under the Every Child Succeeds Act, which is the current primary source of federal funding in schools, the U.S. Office of Education can’t even endorse a program of study.  Nor can it make existing funding conditional on certain curricula or types of instruction.  The law does not allow any federal stamp of approval on a curriculum or sanction of one over another.

Education and curriculum in the United States have always been a very local affair. There is no mention whatever of education in the U.S. Constitution.   It is relatively recently that the federal government got into the business of significantly supporting education with money.  Even so, federal funds only make up about 5-8% of public school funding.  

There is a saying that all politics is local; the same is true for education.  So what our kids learn in school today, very much depends on what the local boards or possibly state boards decide.   Sorry Mr. Trump, that issue is not on the president’s plate.