What Does "Patriotic Education" Mean in the Age of Donald Trump?

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is currently traveling to all 50 states with its History Rocks! campaign.  It's a year-long effort to promote President Trump's vision of"patriotic education, backed by a coalition of 40 conservative and right wing organizations, including the  Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, and Turning Point USA. Not a single organization representing a different point of view is represented.  

In our latest episode, host Louis Freedberg talks with Jon Zimmerman, professor of history and education at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of  "Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools," about what a more authentic form of civics education could look like in the nation's 250th year.  

Not surprisingly, there has been resistance to McMahon bringing her History Rocks! campaign onto some school campuses. Zimmerman prescription?  Welcome Secretary McMahon. But ask her to debate people like Nikole Hannah-Jones from The 1619 Project or others representing contrary points of view.  And then let students make up their own minds. 

Sign up here so we can keep you posted on future podcasts on how education leaders are responding to the mounting threats against public schools In the United States. 

Transcript

Trump Order And Patriotic Education

Louis Freedberg 0:04

Welcome to Education on the Line, a podcast series focused on the latest threats to public education and strategies for confronting them. I'm Lewis Friedberg. One week after President Trump took office for the second time, he signed an executive order calling for ending radical indoctrination in Cape Well schooling and also expanding patriotic education in our schools. He accused schools of imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on a nation's children. That's a quote from President Trump. Much has happened since then, and as we near the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation, I want to look at where things stand today on the patriotic education front and more broadly in the context of civics education and whether we are making any headway on that front as well. I can't think of anyone better to do that for us than John Zimmerman, who is professor of both history and education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Who's America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools and several other books. His next book, Schooling Citizens, How Education Can Save Democracy, will be published next spring. Some of you may have seen his frequent columns in the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as in The Chronicle of Higher Education and other media outlets. In December, he published an article in the Atlantic titled America's Schools Are Less Divided Than You Think. And most importantly, he was a high school teacher. He taught social studies in Vermont and in Baltimore, so he has experienced these issues firsthand. Welcome, John Zimmerman.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Thanks. It's good to be here.

Louis Freedberg 1:56

Well,

Are Schools Really So Divided

Louis Freedberg 1:57

let's use your Atlantic article as a jumping-off point. Let's start with the title that America's schools are less divided than you think. That runs against the sense that we all have that everything is divided.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

It does. And that article actually picked up on a very, very sophisticated survey of K through 12 history teachers, actually grade 7 through 12, by the American Historical Association, which is called The Landscape of American History Instruction. And they asked the teachers, have you received complaints about your instruction? And only 2% said they were frequently under fire. Almost half said they had never received a complaint about their instruction. And like 20% said there had been one. So I think if you open up the newspaper, you would imagine, especially the history instructors, are under this constant barrage of criticism from angry parents. Turns out that's not true. However, Lewis, let me emphasize two things. First of all, that survey was taken before Trump returned to the White House. That's number one. And number two, it was a survey of history teachers, not of English teachers. And I would argue that English teachers are probably more under fire, in part because you can more easily identify the text they're teaching, right? Huck Finn or, you know, Beloved or Mouse. The other really interesting result of that teacher survey of history instructors, which didn't get enough play, was that only a minority say they use a textbook as part of their daily instruction now, which I think in most ways is a very good thing. But also, I think, in a way, insulates them from a certain sort of public criticism because the critics can't necessarily identify the text they're using.

Louis Freedberg 3:36

So what are they using then?

SPEAKER_02 3:38

They're using a variety of internet sources. I think some really good ones, some really bad ones, and lots in between. I think the Didllero Revolution has completely transformed the way history is struck and happened. Before the digital revolution, most of it did happen from the textbook. And it's if chapter 14 is about reconstruction. Open your textbooks to chapter 14. And that's not the way it happens now because there's so many more resources on the web.

Civics Gains And NAEP Wake Up

Louis Freedberg 4:03

Recently, Danielle Allen, who is a professor at Harvard, also very, very active in civics education, she makes a kind of similar point that things aren't as bad as they seem to be, that we are actually making some progress on the civics education front.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

I think we are, and she pointed to it in that article. More people can identify the three branches of government or what liberties are protected by the First Amendment. That's all a good thing. I have enormous admiration for Danielle, but I will also say that there's a kind of negative story that she didn't allude to, which are the nape results. That's the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And the last time we did that, I think it was 2022 or 23, it turned out that just a fifth of kids are proficient in civics. It's fair to say that the NAPE results show that there's still a whole lot of kids that know nothing about American government.

Louis Freedberg 5:00

Well, one of the things she points to is that there have been organizations and efforts in the last several years. One is Civics Now, another is Education for American Democracy, very thoughtful and very ambitious projects.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

This is one of the best things that's happened in education in the past 10 years. I think precisely because Trump represents such a threat to what we used to think of as democratic norms at guardrails. I think there's been more consensus on the idea that we actually do need to instruct people about what those norms are. We can't just expect they're going to get it from osmosis. I think other countries are doing the same thing because they've also seen their own versions of these kind of, let's just call them populist attacks on democracy and democratic norms.

Louis Freedberg 5:57

I mean, there is a kind of edu pessimism, as it were, that nothing is working.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

I think it's too easy to doom scroll. And I would just say, most globally, in the most abstract sense, the good news is that frankly, there's more attention to civics and civic education. That has to be a good thing. I think it's bipartisan. And I think there is this growing awareness that we need to instruct people in the traditions and norms of democracy. They're not just going to pick them up from the atmosphere.

Seal Of Civic Engagement In Practice

Louis Freedberg 6:28

Let me ask you about something called a seal of civic engagement, which I gather about a dozen states are now offering them. I think it goes on your high school diploma. California is one of them, and I just looked up, well, what does it take to get this? And it's not just taking courses in civics. I'll just mention what here in California, I imagine it's similar in other states. You have to demonstrate an understanding of the U.S. government and so on and functions of local governments and so on. But also it requires you to participate in one or more informed civic education projects that address real-world problems. You have to demonstrate civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions through self-reflection. And then this, I don't know how you would measure this, but exhibit character traits that reflect civic mindedness and a commitment to positively impact the classroom, school, community, and our society. I mean, that sounds fantastic to me.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

It is. And again, we should celebrate all of that. And to me, and everything you just recited, the verb participate is the most important one because civics is not just a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of practice. Of course, everybody should know the three branches of government and how a bill becomes law, for sure, right? But they also need to develop a set of skills that you need to be a citizen. And those skills aren't just a matter of knowledge, they're a matter of practice. You have to engage, which is why I like the title Seal of Engaged Citizenship. Those things aren't natural either. Nobody comes out of the womb being a good citizen. You have to practice those skills, including the skill of you know speaking with somebody with whom you disagree. That's a skill, that's a civic practice. Trying to change something in the public sphere that you disagree with, that's a civic practice. And you do need to actually do it. It's not enough, although it's necessary, but not sufficient, to just know what the system is. You have to learn how to work with it.

Testing Time And Teacher Preparation

Louis Freedberg 8:30

One of the things that popped out at me when I was reading your Atlantic article and the results of that survey, that actually what the teachers, the history teachers pointed to was much less a problem of like interference and censorship and so on. But the big problem was they didn't have enough instruction time with students and enough professional training for teachers.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Those are two different things, but they're both real. On the instruction time, starting with No Town Left Behind in 2001-2002, we created these testing regimes in our schools. Now, in some places they've been tamped down because we walked back from NCLB a little bit, but I think that there's still a lot of time spent testing kids. And the more days you devote to testing kids, the fewer days there's going to be for instruction. That's just real. On the second point about preparation, I think this is especially a problem with history. We still have some states in this country where you can be a high school social studies teacher, having taken just a couple of history courses in college. This seems to me to be indefensible. It's not something you see in other countries and other Western democracies where the teachers tend to have much more grounding in their disciplines. So I couldn't be a chemistry teacher, not a good one. I could make you memorize the periodic table. But I think or hope that most reasonable people would understand that that doesn't constitute teaching chemistry. Why can't I be a good chemistry teacher? It's not because I'm not a smart guy or a good guy, it's because I understand the discipline. I don't know what counts as a question or an answer, what it's discovered and what it hasn't. And that involves some deep learning in the discipline. And some of our teachers have that and some of them do not.

History Rocks And The Indoctrination Fight

Louis Freedberg 10:25

One of the things that's happening is the Department of Education, led by Secretary Linda McMahon, has initiated a campaign called History Rocks. Exclamation mark. And they are going around the country for a year, visiting all 50 states to promote patriotic education. And got kicked off last December on the anniversary of the signing or the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. It's going to go for another year. I'm just going to play a clip from the kickoff gathering, joined by a lot of very, very, I would say, conservative and right-wing organizations. There was no representation from anyone on the other side of the political aisle. I'm going to ask you about that also. But uh let's just hear from Linda McMahon.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

We face a sobering reality. Civic knowledge, engagement, and constitutional literacy among our youth. I'm going to say it's in decline. I always, I can almost say it is absent. And we have to really refocus on this. A 2025 poll found that only 41% of 18 to 29-year-olds today are proud to be Americans. They can't name the three branches of government or explain the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine that? And so why don't these young people love America? Or aren't why aren't they proud to be Americans? It's because they don't know America. We haven't taught them about America. They don't know our history. They don't know the trials and tribulations that led to this being the most wonderful country on the face of the earth. That's why the Department of Education is prioritizing policies that promote robust civic education. We're supporting states in adopting standards that highlight the founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution's enduring wisdom. And we're commemorating America 250 with a nationwide effort to reignite passion for our shared heritage with over 100 events from today through January 1st, 2027. This coalition's role we are launching today is vital. We need every person in this room in our mission to improve civics education and ensure every student understands what liberty truly means. So I can't really focus enough on literally how dismayed I have been sometimes in my touring that I've done so far around the country. When I do encounter the lack of enthusiasm for our country, I go to schools where the Pledge of Allegiance isn't said. And I I can't understand that. I mean, I bet most of you in this room, or a lot of you in this room, remember that was the first thing that happened every day in school. You said the Pledge of Allegiance, and where I grew up in the South, you also said the Lord's Prayer. I understand that that's maybe not the right thing in every school. But we have to restore this love of patriotism. We have a pay we have a president who takes the flag and hugs it. I mean, let's see if we can't bring back that spirit of love and devotion to our country.

Let Students Learn From Disagreement

Louis Freedberg 13:54

John Zimmerman, I'm wondering what your reactions are. Love of country. Well, look, Lewis.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

On the one hand, she's saying we need more knowledge about our history, which is something I endorse 100%. But she's also saying our kids have to learn that this is the most wonderful country in the world. That's not a fact, that's a perspective. It's a legitimate perspective, but it's certainly a debatable one. We're not going to make people into better citizens by teaching that claim as a fact, when in fact it is a perspective. We should be discussing that fact. That's how people learn. If you want to live in Saddam Hussein's bath party, it's perfectly legitimate to have everybody taught that Iraq is the most wonderful country. But if what you want to do is live in a democracy, you have to leave those questions up to the citizens. And so what troubles me is not the call for more knowledge about the Bill of Rights or any other subject. Of course, I'm the historian, I endorse that 100%. What troubles me is the aspect of yes, propaganda and indoctrination in this claim, this idea that not only do we have to know more, but we should believe certain propositions, like America is the greatest country in human history. I'm not saying it isn't. What I'm saying is that is a debatable assertion, and we should be treating it as such.

Louis Freedberg 15:16

I'll just share that I grew up in South Africa. History for us consisted of a book written by the government, approved by the government, that we would open the book, and the history teacher, Mrs. Skillicorn, would underline, say, learn this, this will be on the exam. And it was all about the Great Trek and how the Afrikaner settlers came. There were no black people then. They happened to be somewhere else in Africa on some migration pattern. So they didn't occupy any land. And it wasn't history, this was propaganda. So I experienced that.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

That's precisely what the Trump administration is engaged in. I mean, earlier you referenced the executive order about patriotic instruction. It's called the Anti-Indoctrination Order. But ironically, it calls for indoctrination in its first sentence. There's another great irony here, Lewis, that we shouldn't miss, which is the party of Donald Trump and Linda McMahon, ever since Timmy Carter created the Department of Education, has been calling for its elimination on the grounds that education is or should be a state or local concern, which they're right about this. Historically, for most of our history, it was. Isn't it a little bit ironic that the same party that is demanding the end to, and in some ways has succeeded in destroying the Department of Education because schooling should be a state and local matter, is issuing these executive orders from Washington, D.C. without any precedent whatsoever. In many ways, that represents the greatest centralization of national and federal power.

Louis Freedberg 17:01

So I've seen fair numbers of, what shall I say, different trends, initiatives, strategies. But I haven't seen this kind of emphasis on patriotic education.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

We've always argued over what our history should do and say. And that's, by the way, I think a good thing and a necessary thing in a democracy. There shouldn't be a singular narrative about what America is. Americans disagree about what America is. They disagree profoundly. So we've always argued over that. And there have always been voices, especially on the right, who've wanted to inscribe what we maybe will call an American exceptionalist, a highly positive and glorious view, always. But to my earlier point, they've mostly been actors at the local and state level. I think one of the phenomena that the political scientists have underscored that's happened really in the past quarter century is that all politics has become national politics. You know, Tip O'Neill famously said during the Reagan era, all politics is local. I think that's no longer the case. And I think that what we're seeing is the, if you will, nationalization of a question that usually did not take place at national levels. So to ask you a question, Lewis, there's nothing new about the impulse. I think what's new about it is the level of government that the impulse is getting instantiated in.

Louis Freedberg 18:38

How do we deal with, you know, in California, the Japanese tournament camps and so on? Currently we have a whole so much tension around how we deal with Palestinian rights and Israel and so on. How does one deal with these difficult issues? And you've written a book on teaching controversial issues.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

We should let our students in on the little secret. And the little secret is just what you express. We disagree. By the way, they already know that at many different levels, right? And yet, as for your South African example, we persist in trying to pretend that there's a single narrative when there isn't. It is a fact that we disagree about our country. That is not an opinion. It's a fact I could document in a thousand ways. And I think we should share that fact, and it is a fact, with our young people and make it clear to them that the citizens of this country disagree profoundly about it. And because they're gonna be citizens, they need to know about those disagreements so they can frame their own views about them. What I'm saying is that we should leverage the advantage of that disagreement. One of the things that troubles me, like in the term culture wars, is that you know it it has a negative vibe. Let's face it, who likes culture wars? Nobody likes them. It's a bad thing, right? It doesn't have to be. If in fact we can leverage the advantage of it and we can engage the students in precisely the deliberations that we're having. That's what I think schools should do as part of the, if you're asking me what citizens should do, I think they should raise their voices. It's always a little both distressing and amusing to me when I hear my fellow people on the left say, these mobs for liberty people, what do they know about schools? Why is it their business anyway? Why don't they butt out? When I was a kid in the 1960s in America, just like you in South Africa, Lewis, the textbooks taught, if they mentioned the subject at all, that slavery was a benefit and institution, mostly developed by well-meaning white Christians to civilize savage Africans. That's in my lifetime. Now, why did that change? You know why it changed? Because of citizen groups. The NAACP and the Urban League appointed textbook committees who actually went and looked at the books and demanded that they change. So if your thesis, in Remams for Liberty, is that the citizens would just butt out, well, go backwards in time. If the citizens had butt out, maybe we'd still be teaching that garbage about slavery. So the answer is never butt out. That's a loser in America. But in, but in. If you don't like what they're teaching, raise your voice.

Louis Freedberg 21:19

And just to clarify, or the Moms for Liberty is their right wing group, my mom started in Florida, expanded around the country.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

I agree with nothing about what they want, but they have every right, I would even say the duty, Lewis, to raise their voice about what they like and don't like. And the rest of us, I think, have both the right and the duty to challenge them. There are many reasons that Terry McAuliffe is not the governor of Virginia, but the biggest reason is, I think, a week before the election between him and Glenn Yunkin, he was asked about, you know, Loudoun County getting rid of Tony Morrison's beloved. And he said, I don't know. Understand why these citizen groups should have any say in what the schools teach. They should just butt out. And again, I think he was wrong. If there's something you don't like, but in. Don't tell the other guy to butt out. Right? That's not the American way. The American way is but the F in. But in.

Louis Freedberg 22:19

A lot of teachers feel passionately about these issues. And they have their own opinions. Isn't it hard to keep your own feelings? I mean, not just feelings, but based on study or whatever. You were suggesting having a more even-handed approach. Isn't that very difficult?

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Well, here's the thing. I think you can actually express your view, but still have an even-handed approach. The classic text on this was by Alexander Michaeljohn, who was the leading civil libertarian of the early 20th century. And he wrote several essays about the subject where he said, To your point, Lewis, teachers are political actors. They live in a political world. They're citizens just like you and me. And he thought it was actually a mistake for them to pretend that they were like these figures on Mount Olympus, like looking down over the fray. He said they're not. And they shouldn't pretend that they are. But in the same breath, he said when they do choose to share a perspective, they must make it absolutely clear to the students that it is their perspective. And the students are in no way required to share it. So he thought actually you should express your view. And I don't go that far. I think this should be a professional judgment. That is, there may be circumstances in which it's wise for you to do so and not. But I think the larger point that I agree with Michael John about is when you do, you have to be honest and transparent about what you're doing and say, look, you know, like I'm a Democrat, I was brought up in a liberal Jewish family. This is my view of the issue. It doesn't have to be yours, it may not be yours, but I'm trying to be honest with you because I'm a human being in full. I'm not a god on Mount Olympus. Michael Gunn's famous aphorism about this is slaves can't teach freedom. So how are you going to model what we were earlier calling these civic practices if you're simultaneously pretending that you're above them? That doesn't make any sense. I think he was right about that.

Don’t Cancel Speakers Pair Perspectives

Louis Freedberg 24:25

Not to put you on the spot, just to get back to this history rocks campaign, which is going around to schools around the country. Several schools have protested, several districts, and they've actually canceled the visits. My understanding is that the content is not as political as you would think. They are not going in there and trying to justify practices that are clearly problematical. I proposed what you were saying. Should we allow Linda McMahon, Department of Education, to make their presentations?

SPEAKER_02 25:04

I think the answer is absolutely yes. But what we should say is we would love to have you, Secretary McMahon. We welcome you. We value your perspective. And what we're going to do is we're going to pair you with Nicole Hannah-Jones, who is the primary author of the 1619 project. She takes a very different view of American history. It's not the history rocks view. But what we value again is we value the individual judgment, capacity, and autonomy of the citizen, the current citizen and the future one. So you are the sector of education, but you also represent a certain uh strata, a certain perspective in America and in American history. We value that. Again, that's not an opinion. That is a fact. And because we teach facts, we're going to teach that fact. That is a fact. And we're going to bring in Nicole Hannah-Jones, and you will present your History Rocks presentation, and then she'll present her view, her 1619 project view. And then the students in the audience, they will deliberate and discuss which of these views they think better captures the American past. That would be democratic education with a small D, not a capital D, not a Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, capital D, small D, because that exercise embodies the skills that we need to be citizens. So if your question is, should Linda McMahon's view be the only view presented in American school, the answer is no. But if your question is, should we just try to cancel her? That seems self-defeating to me. I think we should, again, we should cast this not as a threat, but as a learning opportunity. I want people to learn the fact, the fact that we disagree. So by all means bring her in, but not by herself, bring her in in concert with somebody who thinks differently from her. And then we'll start to learn.

When Coalitions Pick One Side

Louis Freedberg 27:06

One of the things that seems really unacceptable in terms of this history rocks campaign is it has 50 organizations that are part of this coalition. All right-wing conservative organizations. The American First Policy Institute, which she helped start, the Hillsdale College, Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, not a single, single organization representing different points of view. My understanding is I can't say this for a fact because the Department of Education didn't respond to questions reporters posed on this. I don't believe they invited any of those groups. I would say that it's only halfway through this campaign. I think they should invite those groups and at least have a discussion as to whether they're going to participate or not. But right now, they've played their hand, that they're only presenting a certain point of view.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

I've looked at some of the materials, and here's the way I would describe them. It's not like they say slavery was a great thing. And it's not even that they deny the presence of it. Of course, they don't. And I think it's a misrepresentation to imagine that they're simply denying the presence of slavery, which by the way was what the textbooks historically did. And so this is a good thing. But I also think it's fair to say that they downplace slavery in the sense that they depict it as an aberration from an otherwise glorious norm. Okay. And again, it's not that that's wrong, quote unquote. That's a very distinct perspective. And not one that Nicole Hannah Jones and the 1619 Project care. If you look at the title of the 1619 Project, 1619 refers to, you know, the first year that enslaved Africans came to American shores. And so she doesn't see this as an aberration. She sees this as part of the very founding and the meaning of the United States. That doesn't mean she's right either or wrong, right? It means that simply because you include slavery doesn't mean you're just telling the truth. No, you're going to be telling your truth because you're going to be interpreting the meaning of slavery within a broader narrative.

Louis Freedberg 29:27

And again, we accepting these things, it's just they seem so normal during this Trump administration, but normally you would expect Department of Education to incorporate all points of view, not using taxpayer money just to promote certain groups, very slanted points of view of history.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

If you don't think that your school should be teaching the perspective we're talking about, you should complain. Absolutely. There's nothing more American than that.

Louis Freedberg 30:08

Well, you heard it from John Zimmerman. Complain. Get your voices heard. Or kebetch, if you will. You could kebetch as well.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Yeah.

Louis Freedberg 30:19

We should not be retreating at this point, but engaging.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Yeah.

Louis Freedberg 30:23

And this has been a very important discussion. I really want to thank John Zimmerman, professor of history and education at the University of Pennsylvania. He's the author of Who's America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. His next book, Schooling Citizens, How Education Can Save Democracy, will be published next spring. Thanks so much for joining us today, John Zimmerman.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Thank you, Lewis. It was fun.

Wrap Up And How To Engage

Louis Freedberg 30:51

And on that note, we have to bring this episode of Education on the Line to a close. Our producer is Kobe McDonald, and our advisor is Pedro Negera, Dean of the USC Rossius School of Education. Our sponsor is the Hewlett Foundation. Please subscribe to Education on the Line wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lewis Friedberg. Thanks for joining us.