First Steps

I began my research into the curriculum of the Fairfax County public schools in September 2021.  A good place to start, I decided, would be to examine the History and Civics textbooks being used in the middle- and high-schools.  Do they fail to address the history of race and indigenous people adequately, as some on the left allege, or do they inject Critical Race Theory or other ideologies into the curriculum, as some on the right claim?  The results of my research were satisfying in some respects and unsatisfying in others.

I started by going to the Fairfax County Public Library to examine the textbooks.  To my surprise, I was told that not a single branch of the county library system carried them.  I mentioned this to the Fairfax County School Board member for the Springfield District, Laura Jane Cohen, and she put me in touch with the Instructional Services Department of the school system.  There I learned that relatively few students have hard copies of the texts; instead, they use online copies.  (Oh, how times have changed.)  When I asked if I could get online access, I was told no; the contract with the publisher limits access to registered students.  I was, however, invited to come to the Willow Oaks office of the school system, where I could examine the books.  I did that and spent a good part of a day reviewing three of them:  The 7^th grade text A History of the United States: Modern Times (McGraw-Hill 2018), the 11^th grade text Virginia and United States History (Pearson Education 2018), and the 12^th grade text American Government (Pearson Education 2018).

The Textbooks Seemed Encouraging

All three textbooks are comprehensive in their scope.  They cover the relevant topics in much more detail than the texts of my youth.  I concluded that if today’s students mastered the content of these books, they would know more about American history and American government than most college graduates.   Moreover, rather than focusing mainly on the President and Congress,  events, dates, and other “dry” history, they devote considerable space and emphasis to social history — the lives and difficulties faced by common people, including African Americans, Native Americans, laborers and women.  They include profiles of men and women in various walks of life who contributed to our rich history.  And they do so fairly objectively, without undue preaching or ideological bent.

For example, the 7^th grade history text, which covers American history after the Civil War, includes the following:

• Several lessons on the Reconstruction Era discuss the Southern states’ efforts to deny civil rights to blacks in a variety of ways, such as Jim Crow/segregation laws, poll taxes and literacy tests, denial of credit to black merchants, school segregation, refusal to sell farmland to blacks, and lynching and other forms of intimidation.  
• A chapter on the Opening of the West covers injustices to Native Americans in some detail.  
• A chapter on Workers in the Industrial Age discusses unsafe/unhealthy working conditions, long hours, discrimination against women, child labor, and violence against labor unions.   
• A chapter on The New Immigrants includes a discussion of anti-immigrant sentiments and laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act.  
• A chapter on Women and Progressives covers the activism and achievements of women in the early Twentieth Century in civil rights and social reform; and a chapter entitled Excluded from Reform covers discrimination against blacks, Asians, Catholics and Jews in this era.  With respect to African Americans, the chapter discusses segregation, employment discrimination, intimidation (e.g., lynching, the KKK), and racial bias by whites, as well as efforts by black leaders (e.g., Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DeBois) to achieve equality.
• A chapter on The Roaring Twenties includes a section on an increase in nativism and revival of the KKK.
• A chapter on Living Through the Depression includes a discussion of the particularly severe impact on the job opportunities for African Americans and the devastating impact of the collapse of farm prices on African American farmers.
• A chapter entitled On the Home Front covers the combat role of African American soldiers in segregated units.
• A chapter on Life in the Fifties discusses “white flight” to suburbs, employment discrimination, and vanishing job opportunities in inner cities.
• A chapter entitled The Civil Rights Era covers, among other things, the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions, the Little Rock desegregation showdown, the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King’s efforts, President Johnson’s Great Society programs, the March on Washington, and battles for women’s rights.

The 11^th grade History textbook and the 12^th grade American Government textbook are similar.  Like the middle school text, they are comprehensive, objective and non-ideological in their coverage.  All of them include extensive discussions of issues relating to racial and sexual discrimination.

Unfortunately, the Textbooks Don’t Tell the Whole Story

When I was seeking access to the textbooks, Fairfax County’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Noel Klimenko, informed me that teachers use a vast array of other materials in formulating their lesson plans.  The textbooks provide the backdrop, but the school system provides thousands of resource materials to particularize the curriculum for the county’s schools.  Thus, reliable conclusions can’t be reached by reading the textbooks alone.

It is in the school-system-supplied teaching materials that ideology can get inserted.  And getting access to these materials is a difficult, time-consuming and somewhat expensive process.  I have made several requests for records under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and am in the process of seeking more.  I will address my ongoing findings in subsequent posts.  I can say here, however, that there is indeed much cause for concern about indoctrination of our children.

Parents Need and Deserve Better Access

This first step in my research was unsatisfying in another respect as well.  I cannot understand why reference copies of the textbooks being used in Fairfax County’s schools are not available in the public libraries.  Even if they were not being used to teach tens of thousands of our youth, they would be valuable resources for the general public to learn about American history and government.  And given that they are the basis for instruction of our children, the interest in transparency dictates that they should be readily available.

Therefore, when I learned that the library system doesn’t carry the history and civics texts, I petitioned all members of the School Board and all members of the Public Library Board of Trustees.  The chairwoman of the Library Board immediately shot me down, citing the library’s limited resources.  The School Board’s Laura Jane Cohen expressed support for my request, but most of the others did not respond, and, as far as I can tell, my request has died.  The school system and the library system find the resources to carry many copies of books espousing Critical Race Theory, as well as allegedly pornographic material (more about this later), and yet they can’t scrape up the funds to carry a few copies of important teaching materials?

Please help promote this blog …. Share this post.