A few weeks ago, the civics curriculum wars reached the White House: Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission published its first report on a Monday, and Joe Biden’s administration disbanded the group by Wednesday, the new president’s first day in office. The Commission’s first and only act, the 1776 Report, was a conservative response to the New York Times’s 1619 project, which it criticized by name. Its aim was to lay the foundation of a proper American civics education. The U.S. civics curriculum is subject to constant badgering from the Right and the Left, and as this latest White House drama shows, each side restating its narrative at the other accomplishes little. Conservatives are correct to care about America’s founding principles. But by tripping over tweaks to the curriculum, we miss a bigger opportunity to help the next generation act on one of those principles: federalism. Focus on national narratives comes at the expense of state-level knowledge and action.
Read MoreCommentary: Expose the False Narrative of the ‘1619 Project’ by Teaching Students About Federalism and the States
