Tyler Van Dyke – President Trump on Monday signed an executive order establishing the 1776 Commission.
“Just signed an order to establish the 1776 Commission,” Trump tweeted. “We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students, and restore PATRIOTIC EDUCATION to our schools!”
He signed the order just one day before Election Day.
Just signed an order to establish the 1776 Commission. We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students, and restore PATRIOTIC EDUCATION to our schools!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2020
Trump first announced plans to establish the commission in September during a speech at the White House Conference on American History. In his speech, Trump denounced critical race theory and its inclusion in federal diversity training programs. He also called the New York Times’s 1619 Project on slavery “toxic propaganda.”
“Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda — an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together,” he said.
Earlier that month, Trump said the Education Department would investigate schools that incorporate the 1619 Project, which argues that the roots of the founding of the United States began the year the first slaves were sold to British colonists rather than 1776, the year the U.S. declared independence.
The stated goal of the commission is “to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows,” according to the order.
“In recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding,” the order continued. “Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains.”
The commission will be established within the Education Department. Its members will be appointed by the president. The commission is charged with identifying “the core principles of the American founding and how these principles may be understood,” and it will work in conjunction with the government’s “plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American Independence.”
The commission is designed to “promote patriotic education” but emphasizes that enacting the commission’s recommendations will require “local communities reasserting control of how children receive patriotic education in their schools” instead of mandates from the commission.
The commission is scheduled to expire after two years.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for further comment.
SF Source National Insiders Nov 2020