Professor slams 'sneaky approach' to oppression-based teaching of American history: 'fantastically false'
A professor and author who penned a book rebutting much of the modern teaching of American history in classrooms nationwide told Fox News Digital that today's curriculum intentionally presents Western culture in a negative light.
Wilfred Reilly is the author of "Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me" and an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University. He said his book is a response to "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong," Howard Zinn's "A People's History" series, as well as other left-wing curriculum like the 1619 Project.
"There are all these books that try to do two things really," Reilly said. "One is [to] present Western culture as probably the worst culture in the history of the world, and the other is kind of take this sort of sneaky approach to that by saying like, 'and I bet you didn't know these facts, these hidden facts that they're not telling you in school.'"
Reilly takes issue with what he sees as an often oversimplified and non-contextualized curriculum regarding colonialism and slavery, among other topics.
"So, I actually responded to what we're actually learning by looking through these guys, like the 1619 curriculum, and kind of focusing on what they got wrong from the left," said Reilly.
In the case of slavery, Reilly noted that modern educators are teaching only a sliver of the whole story.
"What we're teaching is a focus on kind of the latter part of the Atlantic slave trade, which was one of about 20 global slave trades," he said. "And the reason that we're teaching this is because it allows the pedagogue, the professor or the teacher, a chance to segue into the modern oppression of Black people. That's it. That's why that's a focus."
CRITICS SAY K-12 ETHNIC STUDIES PUSH TEACH STUDENTS ABOUT CISHETERONORMATIVITY, BLACK PANTHER PARTY
Native American history also lacks critical context, according to Reilly.
"I think the current presentation of Native Americans would be that they were peaceful, Gaia-worshiping people who were intentionally exterminated by the Europeans, and that's fantastically false," said Reilly.
"The Natives were people who had their own motivations, incentives, and drives, and who often competed very successfully with the Europeans," he continued. "They were also some of the greatest warriors in history, especially the Plains Indians, on par with the Mongols. The Indian Wars took 400 years. The United States is 2% Native today. I mean, so the depiction is just completely factually false."
Colonialism, he said, isn't unique to the United States, either.
"Most countries, from time to time, engaged in international wars and took land," he said. "This was not simply something that White countries did."
Like the Mongol and Persian Empires, according to Reilly, White Europeans conquered land, which was completely normal throughout most of history.
"Anyway, in that world, White colonialism, European colonialism, was just one variant on if you invite us in as a partner or if we win a war with you, we're going to take some land, and we're going to impose external governance on that land. No one thought of the imposition of external governance as evil."