by Why Nobody Wants to Teach the Past Anymore
History teachers across America are quietly abandoning the profession in what educators are calling “the great retreat,” fleeing a field that’s become a minefield where every lesson plan is potential ammunition in culture wars. Teaching history has transformed from “here’s what happened and why” to navigating parental outrage, political pressure, and competing demands to either sanitize or emphasize various historical atrocities depending on who’s complaining that week.
The dumbing down of history curriculum isn’t happening because teachers want itit’s happening because they’re exhausted from being attacked from all sides for trying to teach actual history. Conservative parents demand patriotic narratives that omit uncomfortable truths, progressive activists want comprehensive coverage of historical injustices, and administrators want whatever generates the fewest angry emails, which usually means teaching nothing substantial at all.
Teachers report being accused of indoctrination for mentioning slavery existed and being accused of whitewashing for not centering every lesson on slavery, sometimes by the same parent in the same meeting. The result is educators throwing up their hands and teaching the safest possible version of history, which turns out to be boring, context-free memorization that satisfies nobody but at least doesn’t trigger school board investigations.
The weaponization of history education has created a generation taught that the past is whatever supports your current political positions rather than a complex series of events that actually happened. Students emerge knowing that history is controversial but not knowing what actually occurred, which is possibly the worst educational outcome imaginable short of teaching them nothing at all.
Meanwhile, experienced history teachers are leaving for careers that don’t require defending basic facts against parents who’ve decided expertise matters less than feelings. The profession is hemorrhaging talent, and who can blame them? Why spend years mastering historical scholarship only to be told by someone who learned history from memes that you’re teaching it wrong? The great American history retreat isn’t teachers abandoning studentsit’s qualified educators rationally choosing sanity over being perpetual culture war casualties.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/the-great-american-history-retreat/
SOURCE: The Great American History Retreat (https://bohiney.com/the-great-american-history-retreat/)
