E Wayne Ross – Page 113 – Critical Theories in Education

Rev. Jim Rigby: Christians Who Want Democracy Must Stop Bowing to a Dictator Christ

Here’s a ZNet commentary by Rev. Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX, and a longtime activist in movements concerned with gender, racial, and economic justice.

Rigby argues that Christianity is build upon a theology power, which contradicts the authority of Jesus’s teaching, which is found in truth. “To picture God in terms of power,” says Rigby, is “one of the great bait and switch gimmicks of all time. People within the power hierarchy proclaim that God is the ultimate authority, and then appoint themselves as God’s interpreters and enforcers. They are God’s humble bullies. It has been one of the most successful con games of all time.”

“Whereas American theology was born out of a hope for democracy, much of it is wedded to a picture of Christ as a benevolent dictator. Should we be surprised that a hierarchical cosmology would produce hierarchical churches and nations? Should we be surprised that religious nations that picture Christ as a loving dictator have produced conquistadors, inquisitors and crusaders?”

Keep reading for the full commentary…http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-06/21rigby.cfm

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ZNet Commentary
Christians Who Want Democracy Must Stop Bowing to a Dictator Christ July 10, 2006
By Rev. Jim Rigby

Whereas American theology was born out of a hope for democracy, much of it is wedded to a picture of Christ as a benevolent dictator. Should we be surprised that a hierarchical cosmology would produce hierarchical churches and nations? Should we be surprised that religious nations that picture Christ as a loving dictator have produced conquistadors, inquisitors and crusaders?

What else could they produce? As the tree is, so shall be the fruit. The word “Lord” was not in the original Bible. It is an English word from feudal times. Whereas the Greek word “kurios” had a range of meanings, from a title of respect, to a title of leadership, to a name for the sacred, the English translation “Lord” refers specifically to a male European land baron. Many people have softened that interpretation in their own minds, but in times of great stress, such nuance falls away and many Christians seek a white male king. He may be called “Pope”, he may be called “the decider President,” he may be called “televangelist,” but the title only masks what he is, a benevolent (or not so benevolent) dictator.

Neither Calvin nor Luther spoke English, but they helped the Popes lay the groundwork for the view of God as a cosmic dictator. From Popes, Luther and Calvin we have some of the ugliest slurs ever recorded against women, intellectuals, and those who refused the church’s message. How did Christians hold slaves, oppress women and slaughter nonbelievers? Perhaps they could not see Christ in non-male, non-European, and non-Christian people because they were limited by their theology. Their “Christ” was merely a glorification of the most powerful member of their own culture.

To picture God in terms of power is also one of the great bait and switch gimmicks of all time. People within the power hierarchy proclaim that God is the ultimate authority, and then appoint themselves as God’s interpreters and enforcers. They are God’s humble bullies. It has been one of the most successful con games of all time.

The real Jesus was born illegitimately. He called himself “the human one.” Just like Buddha, his authority came from truth, not power. He taught whoever has love has God. He said those who work for the common good are his church.

The real Jesus was an anarchist. He spent his life refusing to claim power over anyone. He said that God is understood in terms of love not power. We add nothing to the majesty of “the human one” by adding a throne or a crown. If he did not want to rule over others in life, why should he want it in death? That is why Jesus is called “lamb of God,” he spoke not as the king of the universe, but from its heart.

If you want to know why Americans are so frightened and why we are attacking anything that would challenge our dominance over others, read the Bible. Like Cain we have murdered members of our human family. Even when we silence our victims, the ground beneath our feet cries out against us.

Today’s church lifts its arms to praise Christ wearing liturgical garments woven in sweatshops. So called “Christian America” is still a nation built on the work of slaves. We do not see them because they toil invisibly in other countries. Today’s church doles out bits of charity from booty stolen from God’s powerless people the world over. Anyone who claims to believe in a just God, or even in justice itself, has to know at some level that the prayers for liberation coming from third world countries will be heard and answered. At some level, people of faith have to know that unless America repents of the sin of empire we are a doomed nation.

Whatever prophetic voices survive in the church must take a message to the mainstream denominations. “We are guilty of our leaders’ crimes. Just because we are silent and passive does not mean that we are innocent. If we have any status in the power hierarchy, we are partially responsible for its misdeeds.”

I realize that most of the church consists of wonderful and compassionate people, but that does not matter if we turn over our power to those less charitable. The moderate mainstream church is helpless against fundamentalism because it is built on a nuanced version of the same cracked foundation of a theology of power.

Whether or not we can change America in time to avoid a political and ecological apocalypse, it is never too late to do the right thing. All of us can begin to plant seeds of a better future for our children’s children. For Christians today, that means suffering the consequences of refusing to bow to the dictator Christ of this culture.

The Rev. Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX, and a longtime activist in movements concerned with gender, racial, and economic justice. This summer he is finishing a book on principles for a New Reformation. Rigby can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com.

Natives to get more control over schools; Globe and Mail misses the (curricular) point

An editorial in today’s edition, the Globe and Mail raises concerns about the historic pact signed by B.C.’s aboriginal groups and the provinical and federal goverments, which will allow First Nations people direct control over their children’s education (covering everything from curriculum and exam to liscensing teachers).

The editorial states that “Natives need ways to be better integrated into Canadian society, not more ways to keep apart.”

The flaw in this logic is assuming that giving First Nations direct control over the education of their children will lead to social or cultural divisiveness.

It is obvious that the current arrangement—in which the federal government has control of reserve schools but apparently neglects them—is a failure that has contributed to the very lack of social and economic integration of First Nations people that the Globe and Mail laments.

The Globe and Mail‘s news coverage of the story today, by Petti Fong and Bill Curry, take the same line as the editorial, with an opening paragraph that seems aimed at inciting the idea that the new pact will lead to a denegration of the dominant culture in Canada.

Fong and Curry declare that “in new native school curriculums, John Cabot and Samuel Champlain will be minor footnotes in Canadian history, and Shakespeare a bit player in English classes.”

The content of any curriculum is not a zero-sum game. So, when Christa Williams, executive director of the First Nations Education Steering Committee, states that “The point [of new Native developed school curriculum] is to give kids material they can see themselves reflected in,” this does not automatically make the heros and events that dominate the curriculum social studies curriculum “minor footnotes.”

In fact, it illustrates a principle that should be at the core of the curriculum for all students in B.C., Canada, and everywhere else, that is, how do we create curriculum from which students can construct meaningful understandings of their world and learn how to have agency within it.

In B.C., 79 per cent of students graduate, but for students attending schools on reserves, that number drops to 43 per cent. What does this fact say about the experiences Native students are currently having in B.C. schools?

One way to think about the new accord is that things couldn’t possibly be worse, so why not?

A better approach would be think about how local control of schools and a focus on making the curriculum directly relevant to the social, cultural, historical experiences of the students might produce not only educational improvements, but actually strengthen our pluralistic society helping students to better under their place in the world and how they might take actions to transform it.

It’s that what democracy is suppose to be about?

Natives to get more control over schools—B.C. agreement could be extended to other provinces

PETTI FONG and BILL CURRY

VANCOUVER, OTTAWA — In new native school curriculums, John Cabot and Samuel Champlain will be minor footnotes in Canadian history, and Shakespeare a bit player in English classes.

After six years of negotiations, the federal and provincial governments signed a framework agreement in Vancouver yesterday to give schools on reserves more control over their curriculums.

Pupils in native schools will still have to meet provincial standards in such subjects as reading and math. But instead of learning Shakespeare, literature courses will teach the works of native playwrights such as Drew Hayden Taylor and authors like Eden Robinson.

“The point is to give kids material they can see themselves reflected in,” said Christa Williams, executive director of the First Nations Education Steering Committee.

“When we look at history books, we’re not going to see it from the perspective of the people who came to Canada as visitors, but we will blend it in with a longer, broader history.”

Ms. Williams said the whole point of revising the curriculum and other examination standards is to try a different approach to getting native students successfully through school.

The problem of high dropout rates among native youth has been an issue both federally and provincially. In B.C., 79 per cent of students graduate, but for students attending schools on reserves, that number drops to 43 per cent.

“Anything has got to be better that what we have now,” said Grand Chief Ed John of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations. “Our kids are dropping out like flies, we have to figure out a way to turn that around. What better message to have in the community than to take responsibility for your kids?”

The agreement will give parents, teachers and others in the native community the chance to provide input on what should be taught in schools on reserves and how, Mr. John said yesterday.

British Columbia is the first province to sign on to the framework agreement. About one in five of the province’s 200 native schools have already expressed their intent to negotiate individual agreements with the federal government. Once those individual agreements are done, Ottawa will transfer money directly to the native schools to run their education programs.

The federal government pays for education on reserves. Last year, it spent about $1-billion across the country and $175-million in B.C. for 16,000 students in native schools. About one-third of native students attend schools on reserves while the rest are in public schools.

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said he wants to take the B.C. model across the country so that eventually all native communities can opt out of education provisions of the Indian Act and create their own curriculums.

Mr. Prentice said native schools can pool their money to focus on specific needs, whether it be school supplies, teachers or psychologists.

He said the measures are consistent with what he has been promising since his days in opposition, which is to provide clear standards for native parents to judge their children’s schools.

Within six months, at least 60 native communities will take up the offer to assume authority to run their schools, the minister predicted.

Ottawa is already talking with governments in Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec to extend the agreement into those provinces.

Mr. Prentice played down any similarity between yesterday’s announcement and the promises to reform native education in the 2005 Kelowna agreement.

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, who had harshly criticized the Conservative government for not committing any money for the Kelowna accord for natives, said the agreement signed yesterday reflects the “spirit” of the agreement and is an important step toward closing the gap in education between natives and non-natives.

“Our goal is to make sure young first nations kids across the province get the education they need to deal with the world they live in in a comprehensive and topical way,” he said, “and in a way that grounds them in their own culture and their own traditions so they have the sense of confidence to deal with the world they live in today.”

The agreement applies from kindergarten to Grade 12 and could be extended to include early childhood development and postsecondary education.

U of California starts cyber charter school

The University of California, which has offered individual online courses for high school students for the past seven years, is creating a full online high school in which selected students could take all of their courses online, The San Diego Union-Tribune. reported.

The UC Online Academy will open in August, with as many as 125 students starting the program in 9th grade. Like brick-and-mortar charter schools, cyber charters operate free of many public school regulations on staffing, curriculum and spending. In exchange, they pledge to meet specific academic goals. If a school doesn’t achieve the goals, its charter – the permission to operate – can be revoked.

B.C. First Nations sign agreement to control own education

An historic agreement among B.C. First Nations, the provinical and federal governments will allow First Nations to control their own education. First Nations will be allowed to set up their own school boards, certify teachers, and determine the curriculum to be taught from kindergarten through Grade 12 for tens of thousands of B.C. aboriginal children.

The deal is an important milestone that everyone hopes will be an important, positive development in improving educational outcomes for native children. First Nations leaders have been seeking jurisdiction over education since 1972. About 70 percent of aboriginal children living on reserves fail to graduate from high school and only 27 percent of the first nations population between 15 and 44 years old hold a post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree (compared to 46 of the Canadian population).

Gaining control over schools is just a small step, however, alleviating the poverty and other deleterious social conditions that disproportionately affect First Nations people remain huge problems that must be addressed. And, as in any context, to expect that educational improvements can be had without improving the economical and social conditions is fool-hearty.

As Jean Anyon has said, trying to reform schools without reforming the social and economic situations the schools sit in is like cleaning the air on one side of a screen door.

B.C. First Nations sign agreement to Control Own Education
NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C. (CP) – After decades of abuse in native residential schools, B.C. First Nations are moving in the opposite direction to educate their children with a new agreement on aboriginal education.

“The purpose of (residential) schools was to take the Indian out of the kids,” said First Nations Summit Chief Ed John, who himself went to a residential school for seven years.

The framework agreement between the B.C. and federal governments and natives gives First Nations control over their children’s education.

After legislation has been changed by both governments natives would be able to certify teachers and schools and establish their own curriculum and exam standards.

John believes the changes will allow them to close the huge graduation gap between natives and non-natives.

“Anything has got to be better than what we have now,” he said.

“Our kids are dropping out like flies. What better message (is there) than having your communities taking the responsibility for (their) kids.”

Nathan Matthew, the negotiator with the First Nations education steering committee, told a news conference Wednesday the system is created on the ashes of the residential school system.
“The signing of this education agreement today will empower B.C. First Nations to deliver quality education on their own terms,” he said.

“Education that reflects First Nations culture, tradition and provides contemporary knowledge and skills.”

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell believes the changes will increase graduation rates for native children, which hovers below 50 per cent.

“It’s very important to recognize people’s history and to show respect for their culture,” he said.

Campbell pointed out the Nisga’a nation in northwest B.C. improved its graduation rate to more than 60 per cent when it took over its education program.

He said the goal is to not only give young First Nations the education they need, but to ground them in their own culture and traditions, “so they have a sense of confidence they need to deal with the world.”

“In the past we have failed young First Nations students,” the premier said.

Federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice called the program a model for other provinces to follow.

“There are other provinces such as Nova Scotia and Alberta, Quebec, that are similarly interested in the concept,” he said.

Prentice said the education idea has been tested in the past.

“Everywhere where we’ve tried pilot projects. . .where the First Nations community has been heavily involved in the education system, we’ve had great success.”

Neither Prentice nor Premier Campbell would say what the program may cost, but said it would be funded with startup costs and on a per-student basis.

Squamish First Nations Chief Gibby Jacob, who hosted the news conference, said the importance of the announcement is underscored by the generations of system failures natives have tried to learn under.

Vancouver Sun: Natives to control own education

Natives to control own education
Historic pact between B.C. and Ottawa seeks to end high dropout rate for aboriginal kids

Miro Cernetig
Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

VICTORIA — British Columbia’s first nations will be given direct control over the education of their children in a historic agreement — more than three decades in the making — to be unveiled today by the federal and provincial governments.

Seeking to end the high drop-out rate among native children on reserves, a failure often linked to the poverty in which many Canadian aboriginals live, the federal and provincial governments will allow first nations to set up their own school boards, certify teachers and set curriculum from kindergarten to Grade 12 for tens of thousands of aboriginal children in the province.

“It means that first nations parents and communities would have the right and the responsibility to determine how their children are educated and to determine the content of that education,” states one of the federal government’s background documents obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

The deal, to be announced in North Vancouver by federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice and Premier Gordon Campbell, is being hailed as a first in Canada and an “an important milestone” that could be emulated in other provinces, according to the draft agreement.

At least 40 of the almost 200 first nations in B.C., representing about 160,000 people, have already indicated they want to form school boards. They would be sanctioned to hand out provincial high-school graduation diplomas, known as the Dogwood.

The ground-breaking deal also stipulates that first nations school boards must agree to an oversight system, the details of which have yet to be spelled out, to ensure they meet provincial educational standards. In another surprise move, native parents will get the right to take the federal money allotted to each native child’s education and move it into the provincial school system if they choose.

For federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice the deal represents his first major policy move since the death of the Kelowna accord, the $5.2-billion deal that Premier Gordon Campbell and other premiers and native leaders signed with former Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004. Prime Minister Stephen Harper distanced himself from that plan, promising he would still meet its goal of improving the lives of natives.

“I take my hat off to Minister Prentice,” said Campbell, who had warned Ottawa it risked tarnishing the Crown’s image if it bailed on the Kelowna accord’s poverty alleviation goals. “This has never been done before in Canada. It’s a historic step. It’s a first step.

“There may be times things don’t work as smoothly as we want … but the real spirit of the Kelowna accord, if you want to call it the Kelowna accord, is an open partnership with first nations to close the gap that has separated them from the rest of society for so long. It’s erasing the boundaries of the third solitude that first nations live in. And this is what this will do.”

The deal being offered today is voluntary and there is no unanimity on the part of B.C. first nations as to whether they will sign on. While most native leaders have been calling for greater autonomy and control of schools, others feel they aren’t ready or fear giving up their one-on-one relationship with the federal government.

Under today’s agreement, a first nation choosing to set up its own school board must opt out of parts of the Indian Act that allow the federal government to appoint third parties to run reserve schools. The federal government will be introducing legislation to make that possible in the next few months.

Education has been long seen by native leaders across Canada as one of the reasons for the chronic poverty and unemployment amongst the country’s approximately one million natives, who are twice as likely to be unemployed than other Canadians.

Since 1972, in a paper entitled Indian Control of Indian Education, native leaders have been “seeking recognition by the federal and provincial government of first nations’ jurisdiction over education,” Ottawa notes in its position paper.

But there has also long been a divisive debate about what is the best way for first nations to take control of schools.

There is no doubt that native children in reserve schools are faring poorly. According to the Assembly of First Nations, “there has been literally no progress over the last four years in closing the gap in high school graduation rates between first nations and other Canadians. At the current rate, it will take 28 years for first nations to catch up to the non-aboriginal population”

The statistics reveal a major disadvantage for young aboriginals. Abut 70 per cent of children living on reserve fail to graduate from high school. As well, the Assembly of First Nations estimates that 10,000 aboriginal students who are eligible and looking to attend post-secondary education are on waiting lists because of underfunding.

Only about “27 per cent of the first nations population between 15 and 44 years of age hold a post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree, compared with 46 per cent of the Canadian population within the same age group,” the assembly says.

mcernetig@png.canwest.com

Rouge Forum Update (July 4, 2006)

We are in the process of updating the Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page with some writing from recent visitors to Oaxaca, the NEA representative assembly in Orlando, and Palestine.

For the Fourth of July, however, here is Fredy Perlman’s short pamphlet, The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, a nice counterpoint to a day of the stars and stripes.

New evidence that exit exams increase dropout rates and exacerbate educational inequalities.

High-school exit examinations—which are becoming more widely adopted as a part of standards-based education reform—are correlated with increases in the dropout rate, according to research papers issued recently by two teams of scholars. One of the papers found that the dropout effect is especially strong among black male students.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today:

High-School Exit Exams Are Associated With Higher Dropout Rates, Researchers Find

By DAVID GLENN

Since 1979, a growing number of states have required high-school students to pass exit examinations before they can receive diplomas. For nearly as long, scholars and policy makers have debated whether such exams do more harm than good.

Proponents of exit exams say that they improve learning and future employment by giving both students and school districts better incentives to succeed. Skeptics say that the exams needlessly prevent decent students — who have otherwise completed all of their course work — from receiving diplomas. They also warn that the exams could prompt some students to drop out of high school as early as the 10th or 11th grade, if they foresee that they will fail the tests.

The latest battleground over the issue is California, where on July 25 an appeals court will consider a lawsuit that claims the introduction of the state’s new exit exam should be delayed because certain low-income districts allegedly do not teach much of the material on the exam.

Now two teams of scholars have written papers whose findings might provide support to those on the more-harm-than-good side. In a recent working paper, Thomas S. Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, and Brian A. Jacob, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University, report that students in states with relatively easy exit exams are roughly 4 percent more likely to drop out of high school than similar students in states with no exams. In states with relatively difficult exit exams, students are 5.5 percent more likely to drop out than their counterparts in states with no exams.

The effects are stronger among African-American men, Mr. Dee and Mr. Jacob found. In states with easy exit exams, black male students are 5.2 percent more likely to drop out of high school than their counterparts in states with no exit exams. In states with more-rigorous exit exams, they are 7.3 percent more likely to drop out than are their counterparts in states with no exit exams. (On the other hand, Mr. Dee and Mr. Jacob found strongly positive results for native-born Hispanic women, who are significantly more likely to complete high school and to enter college if they live in states with exit exams.)”Our experience with this has been that it exacerbates achievement gaps,” Mr. Dee said in an interview last week. “The more stringent exams seem to have more-serious effects in terms of reducing educational attainment.”

Mr. Jacob added, however, that the jury is still out on whether exit exams have, over all, a positive effect on students’ learning or on their ability to find jobs. (In their study, Mr. Dee and Mr. Jacob found tentative evidence that African-Americans’ post-high-school wages are higher in states with exit exams, and that white workers’ wages are lower. They emphasize, however, that those patterns might apply only to workers whose wages are very close to the statewide average, and more study remains to be done.) “It’s possible that these policies are having beneficial effects that we just haven’t been able to detect,” Mr. Jacob said.

Mr. Dee and Mr. Jacob used data from the “long form” of the 2000 Census, which allowed them to work with an extensive amount of data. They looked at the experiences of nearly three million people who turned 18 between 1980 and 1998. The census data also allowed them to look at relatively recent high-school graduates; certain other recent studies of exit exams have been criticized because they rely on the National Education Longitudinal Study, which looked at students who were scheduled to graduate from high school in 1992 — a long time ago in terms of evaluating policy.

The second new paper, which appears in the summer issue of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, reports that rates of high-school completion are lower in states with exit exams than in states without such exams. In what may be a consequence, states with exit exams have higher rates of General Educational Development test-taking.

“If exit exams are having an upside — if, on average, kids are learning more or earning higher wages — then they might be worthwhile despite causing dropouts,” said the paper’s lead author, John Robert Warren, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. (Mr. Warren wrote the paper with Krista N. Jenkins, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Rachael B. Kulick, a graduate student in sociology at Minnesota.)

By contrast, Mr. Warren continued, “if the upshot of this policy is only to deny diplomas to some kids, and there’s no real upside for anyone else, then we should realize that this is purely a punitive policy.” Mr. Warren is now studying exit exams’ effects on learning and future employment, and at this point he is skeptical that many strong positive effects exist.

Not everyone agrees. “How bad is it if there’s a 1½-percent reduction in the rate of people who get a regular high-school diploma?” asked John H. Bishop, an associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell University, in an interview on Friday. Mr. Bishop said that most students who fail to pass exit exams have such poor skills that they are not likely to do well in the labor market, with or without a diploma. He argued that the benefits of such exams outweigh the costs borne by students who do not win diplomas.

“What counts is, Do these policies result in more people learning more?” Mr. Bishop said. “In the long run, it’s knowing stuff, not having a high-school diploma, that will help you in the labor market.” In a 2005 study, Mr. Bishop found that, over a period of roughly a decade, states that began to use exit exams raised their eighth-grade mathematics scores significantly, whereas states that cruised along with no exit exams did not see such gains. That finding suggests, Mr. Bishop said, that introducing an exit exam can have far-reaching consequences on a school system’s effectiveness.

History Under Construction in Florida

In the July 2 New York Times, Mary Beth Norton, a history professor at Cornell, points out the Florida legislature recent assertion that the U.S. history taught in the state’s schools “shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed” and “shall be viewed as knowable, teachable and testable” is not only a gross misunderstanding of the nature of history, but part of “a growing tendency in the United States to substitute easily grasped absolutes for messy and ambiguous realities.”

(Norton points to the quest of certain judges to capture the “original intent” of constitutional clauses as another example of this tendency.)

Norton rightly notes that “a stress on facts, not constructions, superficially appears to be ideologically neutral. Yet the choice of which facts to stress, and which to omit, is crucial. In the end, history can never be ‘

She also analyzes why Flordia legislators decided to emphasize the role of Declaration of Independence in the social studies curriculum rather that of the US Constitution:

“In short, a class learning about the drafting of the Constitution would confront the unpleasant reality of founding fathers who either owned slaves themselves or protected the right of others to own them. How much simpler and less troubling to present young people with a rosy picture based on modern understandings of the language of the Declaration of Independence! Under the guise of returning to a factual teaching of history in the state’s schools, Florida’s legislators have mandated an ahistorical construction that paradoxically distorts the very facts they purport to revere.”
July 2, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
History Under Construction in Florida

By MARY BETH NORTON
West Tisbury, Mass.

AS a historian, I love facts. I especially love facts about early America, the subject I have researched, taught and written about for more than 40 years. The Florida Legislature would seem to share my enthusiasm. An education law it recently enacted insists, “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed” and “shall be viewed as knowable, teachable and testable.” The statute places particular importance on the facts of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress two days after its vote for independence on July 2, 1776 — 230 years ago today.

Yet the wording of the law befuddles me. Facts mean little or nothing without being interpreted — another word for “constructed.” All historians know that facts never speak for themselves.

Take an example from my own experience. Several years ago I was delighted to uncover proof in the British Public Record Office that an accused male “witch” in 1692 Salem, Mass., had been trading with enemy French and Indians, just as a young accuser had charged. That document confirmed my developing conviction that the Salem witch trials were linked to New England’s hostile relationships with the French and Indians. But to many other scholars who previously had encountered that document, it meant no such thing.

The Florida law, while claiming to eschew constructed interpretations, is itself an obvious construction. The statute specifically defines what the term “American history” includes: “the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present.”

Among the multitude of omissions from that list is any discussion of the religious development of the country or the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The statute thus constructs an American past that values certain aspects — especially wars and the civil rights movement — more than others.

Nowhere is this construction more obvious than in the law’s emphasis on the Declaration of Independence as a key founding document. “The history of the United States,” it asserts, “shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” Elsewhere, it lists those principles: “national sovereignty, natural law, self-evident truth, equality of all persons, limited government, popular sovereignty and inalienable rights of life, liberty and property.”

Reading that made me wonder if Florida’s legislators had familiarized themselves with the Declaration and the context of its adoption. Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase, after all, was “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — not property.

The Declaration ended, rather than created, a government. It forcefully asserted the right of the people to alter or abolish a polity unresponsive to their needs, a “universal principle” overlooked by Florida’s legislators. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 — who drafted the document on which the nation is actually based — rarely mentioned the Declaration in debate. Indeed, as Pauline Maier, a historian, has pointed out, we owe the current interpretation of the Declaration to 19th-century commentators, especially Abraham Lincoln.

What, then, is to be made of the stress on the Declaration in the new Florida law? An earlier version of the law had emphasized study of the Constitution and the Declaration equally, describing each in general terms. In the new version, only the description of the Constitution retains its non-prescriptive character. The Constitution, after all, is an inconvenient vehicle for setting forth universal principles; it concerned itself with nitty-gritty details about federalism, separation of powers and the like. Further, the Constitution supported the continuation of slavery, thereby undermining the notion that the nation from its earliest days adhered to Florida’s list of universal principles, prominently including “equality of all persons.”

In short, a class learning about the drafting of the Constitution would confront the unpleasant reality of founding fathers who either owned slaves themselves or protected the right of others to own them. How much simpler and less troubling to present young people with a rosy picture based on modern understandings of the language of the Declaration of Independence! Under the guise of returning to a factual teaching of history in the state’s schools, Florida’s legislators have mandated an ahistorical construction that paradoxically distorts the very facts they purport to revere.

The Florida law highlights a growing tendency in the United States to substitute easily grasped absolutes for messy and ambiguous realities. (Another example of the same type of thinking is the quest of certain judges to capture the “original intent” of constitutional clauses.) A stress on facts, not constructions, superficially appears to be ideologically neutral. Yet the choice of which facts to stress, and which to omit, is crucial. In the end, history can never be “factual …not constructed,” as the language of the Florida statute itself demonstrates.

Mary Beth Norton, a professor of American history at Cornell, is the author of “In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692.”