📰 The 1776 Omission: Unpacking Trump's Education Executive Order
An urgent call to action against policies that threaten to rewrite the truth of America’s past, reshaping American education by silencing marginalized histories.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
President Trump's new executive order called "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" 📜 attempts to change how American history is taught in schools 🏫 by promoting a narrow and overly positive view of the nation 🇺🇸 while disregarding the experiences of Indigenous peoples 🌎 and other marginalized groups 🧑🤝🧑. This new approach is seen as a way to erase important discussions about systemic racism ✋ and oppression, leading to a call for action 📣 to protect educational spaces that honor diverse perspectives 🌈.
🗝️ Takeaways
🚨 The executive order aims to eliminate discussions on systemic racism and white privilege.
📖 It presents a narrow, patriotic view of American history that excludes marginalized voices.
🎓 Educators could face repercussions for teaching an honest portrayal of history.
🛡️ Legal challenges may arise, including potential First Amendment violations.
💪 Now’s the time to support ethnic studies, community histories, and Indigenous education initiatives.
The 1776 Omission: Trump's Latest Assault on Truth and Education
Today, in a move that reeks of colonial desperation, President Trump issued an executive order titled "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" - a document so laden with historical revisionism that it should come with a warning label:
"Caution - Contains Weaponized Whitewashing."
Let's dissect this doctrinal disaster piece by painful piece...
Decoding the Doctrinal Disaster
Let's dissect this executive order piece by painful piece. In Section 1, the document claims parents trust schools to "provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation."
Incredible? For whom?
The order defines "patriotic education" with chilling precision in Section 4(d), describing it as a presentation grounded in:
An "accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America's founding"
A "clear examination" of how the U.S. "grew closer to its noble principles"
Noble principles? You mean the principles that:
Justified genocide of Indigenous peoples
Enforced chattel slavery
Stolen land from my ancestors
Criminalized our languages, cultures, and existence
The Machinery of Historical Erasure
This isn't just an educational policy. It's a carefully constructed machine designed to:
Silence marginalized voices
Rewrite historical trauma as a noble adventure
Criminalize critical thinking about systemic oppression
Breaking Down the "Discriminatory Equity Ideology"
The order defines this as any ideology that:
Suggests systemic racism exists
Acknowledges white privilege
Allows students to critically examine historical power structures
They're literally trying to legislate away our right to understand our own oppression!
Beyond the Classroom: A Broader Context of Erasure
This executive order doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of a broader pattern of Indigenous erasure:
Denali Renaming: Stripping Indigenous place names, disconnecting people from their geographical heritage
Immigration Raids: Targeting Indigenous communities, particularly Navajo peoples, on lands that were THEIR territories long before colonial borders existed
Manifest Destiny Rhetoric: Continuing the ideological framework that justified generational theft and genocide
Personal Reflection: The Cost of Erasure
Growing up Chicano in the borderlands, I watched how education was always a battleground. Our histories were footnotes, our languages were punished, our cultures were treated as something to be "civilized."
This order isn't just about textbooks. It's about continuing a long tradition of psychological warfare against indigenous and brown communities.
Legal Battleground: Potential Challenges
Potential legal challenges include:
First Amendment Violations: Restricting academic freedom
Unconstitutional Overreach: Federal intervention in local education
Discrimination Claims: Violating anti-discrimination protections
Funding Manipulation: Using federal resources as ideological control
Impact on YOU
This isn't abstract. This will:
Limit curriculum about systemic racism
Punish teachers who teach honest history
Create educational spaces that further marginalize students of color
Use federal power to reinforce colonial narratives
Call to Resistance
Action Steps:
Support ethnic studies programs
Document community histories
Create alternative educational spaces
Challenge these narratives publicly
Support indigenous-led education initiatives
Former MAS-TUSD Maestro Responds
Your Turn, Gente
Questions to spark revolution:
How have colonial narratives shaped your understanding of history?
What stories from your community have been systematically erased?
How can we build educational spaces of true liberation?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. Our resistance begins with dialogue.
¡Resistencia es Poder! Resistance is Power!
This is more than a blog post. This is a battle cry.
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Thank you for this important piece. I think we should start the discussion centuries before the Revolutionary War. Indeed, I must begin with my own piece from 23 Oct. 2023: https://lennycavallaro.substack.com/p/why-worship-a-perverted-criminal -- an article that discussed a white criminal by the name of Columbus, who is honored to this day with a federal holiday in his honor, numerous statues in cities and towns all over the country, and (of course) immense praise for his odious mission.
I have long seen and frequently noted that Trump has stolen another page from Orwell. In 1984 we were told that "who controls the present controls the past," and Trump clearly casts himself as Big Brother.
Sadly, I witnessed this trend first-hand in the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle. While most people were ready to believe "the war was a mistake," no effort was made to fill in the blanks. No one asked who made the mistake, who benefitted, what lies were we told (by whom), and so many other important questions.
Fast forward to Afghanistan and less than two years later to Iraq. These cost the USA anywhere between $4 to 6 trillion (with some estimates even higher), and the total death tolls may have topped 4.5 million. Of course, "only" around 7,000 were Americans, and then there were 8,000 contractors who also lost their lives [source: Watson Institute/Brown University, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20post%2D9%2F11,died%20directly%20from%20war%20violence]. Perhaps this history -- these FACTS -- should also be purged? Will Trump try to sanitize the history of a war begun under a fraudulent pretext ("weapons of mass destruction")?
I think we all know where this is going. Trump wants HIS OWN HISTORY sanitized in such a way that he never did anything at all questionable (much less illegal). We must fight to see that history, which is a biased discipline under the best of circumstances, does not simply become another vehicle to spread propaganda.
Erasure indeed… and death. Hedgeseth just erased Gen. Mark Milley. Erased men get their security details revoked. This includes others like Dr. Fauci, et. al. The bodies are already piling up because of firings and dismantling. The Jan 6 crew are now an unofficial militia. Watch what began in AZ decades ago sweep across the country on steroids. Hell hath no fury like that of the White Man. But hey— we get what we voted (or stayed home) for.