Trump signs order to push ‘patriotic education’ on eve of election

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order establishing a federal 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education.”

Trump tweeted on the eve of Election Day: “Just signed an order to establish the 1776 Commission. We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students, and restore PATRIOTIC EDUCATION to our schools!”

The president touted the order moments later at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pa., saying, “I just signed that executive order to teach your students pro-American values.”

Trump announced the idea in September in response to the removal of statues of colonial and revolutionary figures during national anti-police brutality and anti-racism protests linked to the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police.

The actual order instructs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to set up the commission within 120 days. It’s up to 20 presidentially appointed members will serve for two years. Ex-officio seats go to the secretaries of education, state, interior, defense and housing and urban development.

The order allows agencies to “promote patriotic education” with federal resources.

Trump’s order says: “The recent attacks on our founding have highlighted America’s history related to race. These one-sided and divisive accounts too often ignore or fail to properly honor and recollect the great legacy of the American national experience — our country’s valiant and successful effort to shake off the curse of slavery and to use the lessons of that struggle to guide our work toward equal rights for all citizens in the present.”

The order goes on, “in recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains.”

It continues: “Viewing America as an irredeemably and systemically racist country cannot account for the extraordinary role of the great heroes of the American movement against slavery and for civil rights — a great moral endeavor that, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr., was marked by religious fellowship, good will, generosity of heart, an emphasis on our shared principles, and an inclusive vision for the future.”

Although the federal commission will encourage a patriotic view of history, the document acknowledges local control of schooling in the US. Some Democrats have vowed to resist the initiative.

“A restoration of American education grounded in the principles of our founding that is accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling must ultimately succeed at the local level. Parents and local school boards must be empowered to achieve greater choice and variety in curriculum at the State and local levels,” the order says.

In a September 17 speech, Trump said Democrats and the New York Times’ slavery-focused “1619 Project” promote an inaccurate version of US history by over-emphasizing race.

“We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed,” the president said.