President Trump this week issued an order barring federal funding of “the indoctrination of children.” And in its first sentence, he declared that schools should “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible nation.”
Got that? He said he would ban indoctrination, and then he called for more of it.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of Trump and education, where nothing is quite as it seems. On the one hand, Trump wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education on the grounds that schooling should be a state and local concern. At the same time, though, he is imposing new federal doctrines about what schools should teach.
Witness Trump’s ban on Critical Race Theory, which he called “an inherently racist policy.” That’s one view of it. But Trump wants to impose his view, all in the guise of fighting indoctrination.
Or consider the 1776 Project, which Trump created during his first term in office to counter the New York Times’ 1619 Project. As per its name, which refers to the year that the first enslaved Africans arrived on our shores, the 1619 Project roots American history in slavery and racism.
By contrast, the 1776 Project highlights America’s timeless virtues: freedom, liberty, opportunity, and so on. President Joe Biden revoked it when he took office, but Trump re-established it this week “to promote patriotic education.”
It’s Trump’s story. And, again, he wants to impose it on everyone else.
Let’s be clear: In the classroom, indoctrination is always a danger. We have all had teachers who presented their own political biases as the gospel truth; in the worst cases, they insisted that students echo them to get a good grade.
In a recent survey of 850 high school students published by Education Next, 36 percent reported being taught “often” or “almost daily” that “America is a fundamentally racist nation.” And 34 percent said that teachers told them often or almost daily that “police officers are inherently racist against Black Americans.”
Does that mean they’re being indoctrinated into the canons of Critical Race Theory, which holds that racist practices and beliefs are baked into American institutions? Not necessarily.
Over half of the students also said they were taught often or almost daily that “the U.S. has made a lot of progress toward racial equality in the last 50 years,” and 42 percent said they were taught that “the U.S. is a global leader when it comes to ensuring equal rights for all citizens.”
We can’t tell how the teachers are instructing these ideas from the student survey. If teachers are presenting them as fact — and requiring students to repeat them — then they’re indeed guilty of indoctrination. But if they present these matters as questions — and challenge students on their answers — the teachers are doing exactly what they should.
If students say America is a racist country, their teacher should ask why it elected a Black president. And if they say it’s a beacon of racial equality, they should be asked why Black Americans are more likely to be poor or incarcerated.
That’s education, not indoctrination. But it could be prohibited by Trump, who charged that schools are teaching “radical, anti-American ideologies” that make white children feel ashamed of themselves. Would an honest dialogue about race run afoul of Trump’s order? We don’t know, which is why teachers might simply avoid the subject.
Trump also threatened to pull funding from schools teaching “gender ideology,” especially the idea that a person’s gender identity can differ from their assigned sex at birth. To be sure, Americans are deeply divided on that question. And again, Trump wants to indoctrinate his own answer: Gender is binary and immutable.
Finally, Trump’s order said that the federal government would “investigate and punish” antisemitism on America’s college campuses. Does that mean professors and students who protest Israel’s war in Gaza would face penalties?
Again, we don’t know. All we know is that the Trump’s administration would get to define antisemitism and impose its will on everyone else. And if that’s not indoctrination, I don’t know what is.
The best teachers I had made me think for myself. And the best way to fight Trump’s order is to rededicate ourselves to that ideal. We should present the 1619 Project and the 1776 Project to our students, and let them sort out the differences. And we should ask them questions, instead of giving them answers.
You can’t fight indoctrination if you’re doing it yourself. Just ask Donald Trump.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the advisory board of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.
