New SPS history elective is inclusive, not “indoctrination,” district says

If history is about perspectives, a new American history course adopted this year by Spokane Public Schools hopes to incorporate as many views as possible, its curriculum coordinator said this week.

At the same time, the district’s new “American Perspectives” course isn’t the same as curricula that President Donald Trump attacked last week as the product of “left-wing indoctrination in our schools.”

During a Constitution Day event on Thursday, the president singled out the 1619 Project, a product of the New York Times Magazine, which reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans.

Trump said the project in fact “rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.”

Months earlier, students in a multicultural club at North Central High School provided the first impetus toward the “American Perspectives” class, which promises to bring a more inclusive approach to the subject.

“I would just say that we highlighted all the different ways different groups have added to that narrative,” said Heather Bybee, the district’s director of K-12 curriculum. “It’s more about elevating history from a variety of perspectives than it is about critiquing.”

The course meets all state requirements for a traditional American history course, Bybee said.

The class has about 200 students in the district’s five comprehensive schools. It can be taken instead of the standard history or Advanced Placement courses.

All cover the period from 1877 – the end of Reconstruction following the Civil War – to the present.

The idea for the class came well before this year’s Black Lives Matter unrest in Spokane and other cities. The movement increased attention on police brutality against Black people, and removal of monuments nationwide of historical figures who held racist views.

At North Central, a multicultural student club known as Shades had focused on history curriculum. At the same time, the district’s Diversity Advisory Council had examined K-12 curriculum.

Based on the work of the club and the council, the district began to lay the groundwork for the new course.

At a cost of about $15,000, the course will examine supplemental materials that have received little attention in traditional courses.

Examples provided by Bybee include the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo code talkers and the Bracero program, which brought Mexican-born farm workers to the United States to fill agricultural jobs and provide necessary supplies to civilians and the war effort.

Teachers also will use books on the LGBTQ experience, feminists and young Latinx Americans.

All students will be asked to write an autobiography or background of “who they are and how they belong in the community,” Bybee said.

Bybee said the new course would “encourage critical thinking and empower students to look critically at information.”

In remarks last week, Trump denounced “propaganda tracts” that “try to make students ashamed of their own history.”

History curriculum has been a controversial subject for decades in the United States, which doesn’t have a national standard for its teaching.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal government is prohibited from mandating or controlling a state’s or school’s education standards or content.