Education should not be politicized

Sometimes after I read an article, I’m left wondering how the future will turn out while other times I’m left dreading it.

After reading about a legislative committee in Oklahoma voting to move a bill cutting funding for advance placement American history courses, I felt that unique feeling of dreading what the future may bring.

Currently, the bill is being reworded after criticism about what the bill would do for students and the state’s school system was aired by parents and teachers.

However, regardless of rewording or not, the damage has been done and that state’s legislature has shown that promoting its preferred version of history is more important than whatever is recommended by a group of educators.

While those politicians have been quoted in other articles talking about how the course doesn’t present an idea of American exceptionalism and promotes what has been called a revisionist view of American history.

I’m dismayed because a complete view of American history is needed to have a full appreciation of how we, as a country, came to be. That complete view is also needed to understand the whole picture.

It’s important to look at issues like Manifest Destiny and its impact on how the country was settled, as well as how it influenced dealings with Native American tribes and was one of the causes of the Mexican-American War.

Don’t misunderstand me. American history is filled with amazing achievements and monuments to modern ingenuity. While I most definitely believe those high points should be studied, I also think that portray the U.S. in a less positive light should be under that same microscope as well.

History is a fantastic subject to study and it’s one of my favorites. But a political agenda shaping what and how students can learn history would be more disastrous than anything.

It would promote biases and an understanding of select events that would only be a small part of the full story.