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Revoke the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project: Too Little, Too Late?
I felt vindicated for my early attacks on the 1619 Project when I learned that the National Association of Scholars signed a letter that directed the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke its award of the Prize to The 1619 Project. But my appreciation of the news was short-lived.
The NAS acted nobly in criticizing the 1619 Project. As they said in their letter to the Board:
We call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in ‘The 1619 Project.’ That essay was entitled, ‘Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.’ But it turns out the article itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence.
They went on to say:
The duplicity of attempting to alter the historical record in a manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction against professional ethics as a journalist can commit. A ‘sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay,’ as the Pulitzer Prize Board called it, does not have the license to sweep its own errors into obscurity or the remit to publish ‘deeply reported’ falsehoods.
And finally, the Times changed its digital version but did not make the change public:
Beginning almost immediately after its publication, though, the essay and the Project ran into controversy. It has been subjected to searching criticism by many of the foremost historians of our time and by the Times’ own fact checker. The scrutiny has left the essay discredited, so much so that the Times has felt the need to go back and change a crucial passage in it, softening but not eliminating its unsupported assertion about slavery and the Revolution.
Many of us would recognize the signatories to the letter that included, Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College; Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Roger Kimball, Editor and Publisher; Wilfred M. McClay, historian at University of Oklahoma; and a Ricochet contributor, Paul Rahe, Professor at Hillsdale College.
Although President Trump has called for schools that teach the 1619 Project to be defunded, many schools have been using the curriculum for months, particularly in California and the Chicago Public Schools. Dr. Janice Jackson, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, offered this statement:
‘The stories we tell about our nation’s history matter deeply, and the 1619 Project offers us a new set of stories by ‘placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are’ through a collection of essays, stories, poems, and photography that marks the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery,’ Jackson wrote.
‘As educators, we are always looking for new tools and strategies to help students contextualize the world around them so they may one day become informed and effective citizens,’ the CPS CEO said.
No one except the NAS seems particularly concerned that this curriculum is false, deceptive, and misguided. This story is just another example of the anti-American propaganda that has been taught in our schools for years.
Maybe President Trump will begin the process of holding the schools accountable for teaching the truth.
Or is it too late to make a difference?
Published in Journalism
It would be fun to interview one of those “history teachers” and see how long it would take to reduce the subject to a blubbering wreck. How can you teach history if you don’t know any?
@asquared, I just can’t imagine watching this unfold personally as you have. When I hear the news about these outrages, I try to keep some distance and tell myself, well, it can’t be happening everywhere. And then I hear your story and I just want to cry. It’s a travesty that education has destroyed itself. Is your son still in school, or has he escaped?
We moved to TN and put him in a private high school with the money we saved in property taxes. I can’t say the crappy education my son was getting in IL was the primary reason we moved, but it was definitely on the list. But I do think the overall perspective that Chicago and our suburb have that all white people are evil is the motivating force behind most of the things on the list that caused us to leave the state several years ahead of schedule (though COVID enabling me to work remotely for the foreseeable future played an important role too.)
The corrupted approach to the teaching of history is already having an effect on our daily lives. Today’s hearing on Judge Barrett’s judicial appointment shows the contrast. Democrats on the committee want the Judiciary to act as a legislative policy body and Republicans see the Supreme Court as it is meant to be.
Bob Thompson (View Comment):
Democrats on the committee want the Judiciary to act as
atheir legislative policy body and Republicans see the Supreme Court as it is meant to be.FIFY
Tennessee is supposed to be a great place to live. I hope it works out well for all of you!
We love it so far.
And, we have liftoff of the spaceship Snowflake bound for who knows where.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/12/new-york-times-union-condemns-newspaper-bret-stephens-op-ed-criticizing-project/
By the way, did you know that the author of this doggerel, Nikole Hannah-Jones is a “national treasure”?
Even with the aid of my trusty thesaurus, I can’t come up with a word to describe this madness…
I was really annoyed to read that he felt he needed to have students with French ancestry in his class in order to teach the French Revolution. I don’t even know what to say about that.
Pandemonium?
Did he go into how after they had killed most of the smart, educated ones, a diminutive Corsican stepped into the chaos, took over, crowned himself emperor, and got a whole lot of them killed?
Naw, I think that’s still inadequate. It does say a lot that a columnist for “The Newspaper of Record” does not know even the simple rules of grammar.
All of my history classes were always chronological- it just made sense that way (and I wish I remember the early ones better!). This thematic (student-centered) approach puzzles me, but Shelby Steele mentions it in his work. Instead of raising the bar for poor students and telling them they have to work harder to succeed, the bar has been progressively lowered. Alas!
Chaos?
I’m still looking for something worse than “blithering incompetence” and “abysmal ignorance”. Just can’t find the words for it. Journalism’s race to the bottom is hard to describe…
How about “Joe Biden?”
Please, @cacrabtree, I just had lunch . . .
This really drives me nuts. We are making sure they continue to fail by lowering standards. It makes no sense–unless that is precisely what they hope to do.
This post with a teacher’s #walkaway video is really good.
https://ricochet.com/811423/worthwhile-watching/
She makes a great point about “woke” thought being a form of sabotage-thinking.
Yup, sorry about that.
Still, it seems to me that the present-day NYT is clearing the Walter Duranty fiasco in their street shoes. No journalistic integrity, no adherence to grammatical standards; all topped off with absolutely no sense of shame. For the life of me, I can’t understand how it has any relevance in our national discussion. Yet, our intelligentsia still consider it to be our “newspaper of record”. Unbelievable
Old/bad habits are hard to break?
Possibly. However, I never get too far away from Orwell, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them”.
When you throw in the pseudo-intellectualism and narcissism of the millennials plus the innate stupidity of the 60s radicals (not to mention, even more narcissism); it makes for a toxic mix. So, I’m probably talking about the majority of the NYT readership.
It is the death of paleomedia. You might want to stay upwind.
Paleomedia. I like it…
Which is a distinct advantage if you are trying to teach children that life in the US is misery and injustice.
The story is what makes the whole thing interesting. Without that, it’s pointless.
And honestly, there really is a moral arc (though it is madness to think it will ever reach perfection).
And while it might arc towards justice, it’s not – certainly I hope not – towards what the left calls “justice.”
Deevolution.
They’re kinda conservative that way; it’s the newspaper of record because it’s been the newspaper of record.