The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Black Principal Defends 1776
“I’ve spent nearly 30 years in education,” says Phillip Schwenk, a black principal at a school in Tennessee. “Twenty of those years were working at urban schools teaching mainly minority students. I’m an educator first and foremost because I care deeply about kids and their growth into well-educated, thoughtful and good adults.”
Yet he finds himself the target of attacks declaring that curriculum he supports is “racist” for … teaching American history honestly.
While I enjoy tough questions and debates — just like I encourage from my students — this type of activism rarely asks about the kids we hope to serve and instead peddles the narratives of those who oppose school choice at any cost, even at the expense of the truth.
They don’t ask about my background teaching in inner-city Los Angeles or Cleveland or my experience as a Black educator. Instead of asking about education and what’s best for America’s leaders of tomorrow, they appear far more interested in telling me, a Black American, how my school allegedly has a racist agenda. These far-fetched and baseless allegations aim to silence those of us working to put the educational needs of kids first.
The activists have a problem not with the racist 1619 curriculum peddled in too many schools, but with The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum.
As to misconceptions about our curriculum, there are two main points regarding slavery and Civil Rights in American history that demand repetition.
First, The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum believes that the United States was not founded on racist principles or to defend the heinous institution of slavery.
Second, The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum recognizes that the United States does have a unique and exceptional history — that alongside our failings and the pains of civil strife, war and the nation’s ongoing journey to form a more perfect union, there are good things that have come out of the American experiment, and that our children should learn of the founding principles that form the bedrock of this country are brilliant and good.
We teach all of American history — warts and all.
The curriculum doesn’t shy away from the evils of slavery or the battle for civil rights.
Yet we also teach about the founding principles of America’s government — that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights — which provided the critical basis for the abolition of slavery and paved the way for the successes of the civil rights movement. As a Black man and educator, that last point speaks to the heart of the matter. And it’s an ultimately uplifting, joyful and wonderful message that I look forward to sharing with the students we intend to serve.