Hillsdale College: Fight Back Against Critical Race Theory with Our Free K-12 History Curriculum

Matthew Spalding, vice president of Washington Operations at Hillsdale College, invited parents and educators to combat left-wing revisionist history with his school’s K-12 “1776 curriculum.”

“It’s a full curriculum, 2000 pages,” Spalding said on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “It’s 85 lessons. It’s a full set. It’s free to anybody who wants to use it: homeschoolers, private schools, public schools … states if they want to use it. It’s absolutely free to anybody who wants it.”

Spalding described Hillsdale College’s 1776 history program as a corrective against neo-Marxist “identity politics” and “critical race theory” inserted into public education across the U.S.

“It’s our gift, if you will, to this debate,” Spalding said, referencing competing narratives of American history.

Leftist narratives pushed by the 1619 Project market ideology as history, Spalding held.

He remarked, “This debate has nothing to do with history. We think it does. They say it has to do with history, 1619 versus 1776, but … some people currently today — and this happens sometimes, this is called politics — are using history merely as a foil to fight a current political battle.”

“They want to fight about race and public policy in America today,” he continued. “We actually want it to be a discussion about history because our curriculum in a K-12 education should be about America’s history, about its civics, about what the country means, about its principles, how those played out, flaws and all.”

He went on, “We must understand this is not merely a view of history versus another view of history. They’re not about history at all. They’re merely using history. It’s an ideological fight. What’s going on is an ideological struggle, and they’re putting it within the classroom to fight about politics in the classroom, which all Americans should object to.”

Hillsdale College’s 1776 curriculum offers parents, teachers, and other stakeholders in children’s education a “positive alternative” to leftist demagoguery inserted into government-run schools, Spalding held.

“There’s nothing controversial here,” he stated. “This curriculum is an American curriculum [about] America’s history, teaching it well, to tell the story, but tell it accurately, fairly, so that despite its flaws and imperfections — through those flaws and imperfections, if you will — you actually see what the great accomplishments are of this nation.”

Accurate historical analysis bears out American exceptionalism, Spalding concluded. He determined, “We believe history, properly taught, leads one to conclude naturally this is a great and exceptional nation.”