The 1776 Report is a bunch of plagiarized racist nonsense from the early 20th century, accentuated by some Southern Strategy and culture war paranoia.

It's also going to take up a lot of time & energy of a lot of good people for no good reason. 1/

It's going nowhere. Some schools will latch on. They're the ones already doing this crap. They would do it with or without it. It will give them a quick shot in the arm of adrenaline, but that's really it.

These campaigns have always been designed to make noise & distract. 2/

The history of education in the US, especially social studies ed, is chock full of this kind of belligerent ignorance. I've waded through tons of this for the book I'm writing. You could pull almost any quotation from the past battled & find its equivalent in the 1776 Project. 3/

My point? This admin is going out. The new one won't be pulling this. Don't give it oxygen. That gives it legitimacy.

When it rears its head at the state level smack it down hard. Don't write huge twitter threads a/b it. Write huge twitter threads about solid history instead. 4/

(Unless, of course, you were foolish enough to, like me, choose history ed as grounds for public memory as your focus of research. Then... sigh. Let's form a support group.)

But in seriousness: 5/

This is a huge waste of your time unless that's your field, so don't feel like you have to rage read it. We've seen it before. We'll see it again. Focus on your local school board & state content standards - a big national twitter fight will strengthen it. 6/

Besides, it's really just descriptive of most of what states & textbooks require teachers to teach already. Let's focus instead on working w/ K12 to challenge it through efforts like #DisruptTexts & @facinghistory. Time much better spent. 7/7

Should add: if you're unfamiliar with the previous battles, check out Jonathan Zimmerman's Whose America? The Culture Wars in Public Schools, Ron Evans' The Social Studies Wars, or Gaither's American Educational History Revisited. All good primers on this repetitive fight.

Also @OBWax wrote a great short overview of these fights, interviewing me & several others who work on this: https://time.com/5889051/history-curriculum-politics/

Also as my good friend @Dialecticution notes: the report was released today because Stephen Miller is a white supremacist.

Don't talk about it today. Talk about Dr. King instead. It'll be there, and just as toothless, tomorrow.