The cover story: Inside critical race theory and the fight over which history kids learn

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The Cover Story Critical Race Theory Is Simply the Latest Bogeyman.' Inside the Fight Over What Kids Learn About America's History By Olivia Waxman Staff Writer, TIME When then President Trump announced the 1776 Commission last fall—his effort to promote "patriotic" teaching of American history—my ears perked up. As a staff writer here at TIME, I cover all things history, and for the last two years I've been paying special attention to how kids learn about the American past. As we approach the Fourth of July this year, the debate over that question has only gotten more heated. Today, half of U.S. states have passed or are considering actions that could restrict how the topic is discussed in schools—and, in particular, limit the use of critical race theory (CRT), a once-obscure academic framework that has become a stand-in for much more. But while the debate is a national one, curriculum is made at the local level. Missouri is one of the states where bills with proposed anti-CRT language were introduced this year, so this month I went out to meet parents in the Rockwood School District in the St. Louis suburbs, where a county that voted overwhelmingly for President Biden intersects with a county that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. I wanted to see how the debate about history at the national level is affecting real people and how it spreads in a community. In Missouri, there was no shortage of proof of that spread: en route back to my hotel from an interview, I told my Uber driver I had come out to report on concerns that CRT is being taught in the district; he promptly told me that all I needed to know was that CRT is "Marxist indoctrination." (It's not, scholars who actually work with CRT would say.) Parents, often in tears, told me repeatedly how much they loved living in the district and loved America, often invoking their family members as examples of what makes the country great. It was clear that one of the reasons this debate has become so personal is because how we tell the story about America is also how we tell the story about who we are, as individuals. I spend a lot of time talking to historians for my stories, and one thing they will often point out is that there's no such thing as a definitive version of U.S. history. So many diverse people and experiences make up this country, now and in the past. But while the story can be difficult, that's what makes it worth telling. Just as the founders strove to form a more perfect union, teachers and historians are aiming to tell a more perfect history of the country that resulted. As I say in this week's cover story, our understanding of the past is a key factor in how we envision our future. Read the Story » Share the cover story

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