Absurdity
GOP Governor Mandates Public Schools Teach History from 'Positive Angle'
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Governor Dale Hutchins signed an executive order Monday requiring Missouri's public school history teachers to present all American historical events from what the order describes as 'an optimistic and solutions-forward perspective,' ending what the governor called 'a decades-long campaign to make children feel bad about a country that turned out great.'
The order takes effect at the start of the fall semester, giving the state's 37,000 social studies teachers roughly eleven weeks to restructure their curricula around what the Missouri Department of Education is calling the 'Affirmative Historical Framework,' a nineteen-page document that does not contain the word 'slavery' but uses the phrase 'involuntary labor migration' four times.
The framework divides American history into three categories: Victories, Challenges That Became Victories, and Events Currently On Track To Become Victories. The Civil War falls in the second column. The Trail of Tears does not appear in any column. A footnote explains it is 'under ongoing curricular review pending appropriate framing.'
'We are not changing history,' Governor Hutchins said at a press conference Tuesday, standing in front of a banner that read TEACHING AMERICAN GREATNESS: A FRESH PERSPECTIVE. 'We are teaching it the way a good coach teaches a tough loss. You look at what you learned. You look at how you grew. You look at the scoreboard and realize the score was not the whole story.'
A reporter asked what the score was at the end of the Civil War.
Hutchins said the score was 'reunification.'
The framework includes a sample lesson plan for teaching the Great Depression, which opens with the sentence: 'In the 1930s, Americans discovered a powerful truth about resilience.' Teachers are instructed to spend no more than one class period on unemployment figures and to pivot quickly to the invention of the Hoover Dam, which the plan describes as 'a direct community response.'
Linda Caruso, a tenth-grade history teacher in Springfield with twenty-two years of experience, said she read the framework over the weekend and had questions.
'I teach a unit on Japanese American internment,' she said. 'According to the new rubric, I need to identify the 'growth outcome.' I have been staring at that unit for three days. I have not found the growth outcome. I did find that the government eventually paid reparations in 1988, so I think I am supposed to end there and call it a win, but the students are going to ask what we are winning from, and that part is still the internment.'
The Department of Education has scheduled a series of teacher training webinars titled 'Finding the Silver Lining in Primary Sources.' Attendance is mandatory. The webinars are ninety minutes long and include a segment called 'Reframing Without Rewriting,' which several teachers who previewed the materials described as 'rewriting.'
State Representative Carol Beem, who co-sponsored the legislation that preceded the executive order, said critics were missing the larger purpose.
'Children who feel good about their country grow up to be productive members of it,' Beem told reporters. 'Children who spend twelve years being told everything their ancestors did was terrible grow up to be, well, have you seen the internet lately? That is what we are trying to prevent.'
She added that the framework still covers 'all the main events' and that parents should not be concerned.
The framework does not cover the McCarthy hearings, the My Lai massacre, the savings and loan crisis, or the three-fifths compromise. A department spokesperson said those topics are 'not excluded' but are 'not currently scaffolded for optimistic delivery.'
Governor Hutchins, who ran for office in 2022 on a platform that included a promise to 'stop revising history in Missouri classrooms,' signed the order with a pen that had the state seal on it and told the assembled press that he was 'very excited about where history is headed.'
The teachers have until August 14th to submit their revised lesson plans for approval.
The rubric for approval has not been released yet, but sources within the department say plans will be evaluated on 'tone, uplift, and the degree to which students will leave class feeling the arc of the moral universe is bending correctly, or at minimum, bending.'
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