Florida has introduced 'FACT U.S. History' as a conservative, sanitized alternative to the Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) curriculum, omitting key historical struggles and presenting the nation as a completed, flawless project. Written by an APUSH exam writer, this article argues that this move reflects a centuries-old debate in American education between fostering critical, democratic citizenship versus enforcing blind nationalist obedience. This battle matters because how we teach history shapes whether future generations view America as an ongoing, aspirational project or a static, perfect myth.
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*The Paper for the Thinking Citizen*
**SPECIAL DISPATCH • JUNE 29, 1926**
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# THE GREAT HISTORY BATTLE OF THE PENINSULA STATE!
### Florida Scribes Erase the Past to Sell a Sanctified Uncle Sam!
#### NEW “FACT U.S.” COURSE BRANDED “PURE APPLESAUCE” BY SCHOOLHOUSE CRITICS!
##### Will the Classroom Produce Thinking Citizens—or Just Obedient Yes-Men?
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**TALLAHASSEE, Fla.** — There is a brand of snake oil being peddled down in the Sunshine State, and the schoolmarms are up in arms! The grand political pooh-bahs of Florida’s ruling machine are at it again, trying to rewrite the history books faster than a bootlegger outrunning the feds.
It all began in ’22 with the so-called "Stop W.O.K.E. Act"—a gag rule designed to keep the kiddies from getting the blues or feeling any “psychological distress” about the sins of their ancestors. Then, just a year later, the State Board of Education pulled a fast one, decreeing that teachers must tell their pupils that enslaved folks actually got a swell deal by learning handy-dandy skills while in bondage! If that ain’t a load of pure bunkum, this reporter don't know what is.
### THE SENSATIONAL NEW SCHEME: "FACT U.S."
Now, the state bosses have unveiled their latest contraption: "FACT U.S. History." It’s a high-hat, sanitized alternative to the College Board’s Advanced Placement course (APUSH), cooked up by conservative think tanks who claim the old course is too critical of Uncle Sam.
The American Historical Association has blown the whistle on this new curriculum, calling it a setup to push a biased political line. For instance, "FACT U.S." sings the praises of former President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation like they were the bee's knees, claiming they sparked a roaring economic boom and tamed inflation. But what about the runaway deficits? Reduced to a throwaway line! The long-term social fallout? Not a peep!
Yet, when it comes to FDR’s New Deal, they throw the book at it. Students are forced to study the National Recovery Administration just to learn “the limits of centralized planning,” while reading Herbert Hoover’s 1934 book, *The Challenge to Liberty*, which claims the New Deal destroyed American freedom.
### THE GREAT DISAPPEARING ACT!
And talk about a vanishing act! The critics have spotted dozens of glaring omissions. The Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, the Chicano Movement, the American Indian Movement, the Stonewall Uprising, and the shady business of redlining—all vanished into thin air! Phfft! Gone!
As an AP U.S. History teacher who writes exam questions for the College Board, I say this fight is as old as the schoolhouse itself: Should education cultivate civic-minded critics, or just breed blind obedience to the flag?
### THE BLUEPRINT OF THE COMMON SCHOOL
This education game was never neutral. Back in the 1830s, Horace Mann designed the first free "common schools" with a double purpose: to turn out disciplined factory-hands who would punch the clock on time, and to instil Protestant values into German and Irish Catholic immigrants.
In his classic book *Pillars of the Republic*, Carl Kaestle spilled the beans: when immigration and inequality started class wars, the schools responded by preaching "social harmony." The big cheeses wanted a common language and a popular acceptance of the American capitalist machine.
But there was always a row over how to "Americanize" the greenhorns. Even Mann knew that a republic without intelligent citizens would slide into chaos. To have a real democracy, you need folks with the critical horse-sense to ask questions.
### THE AGE OF BLIND OBEDIENCE
For a long time, the schoolhouse preferred the iron fist. In the 1800s, the famous *McGuffey Readers* taught kids that George Washington was a plaster saint and Native Americans were savages. By the turn of the century, kids recited the Pledge of Allegiance and read *A Patriotic Primer for the Little Citizen*, which taught that "the first step in learning to govern ourselves is to learn how to obey."
Nowhere was this more brutal than in the American Indian boarding schools. Under the cruel slogan, "Kill the Indian, save the man," Indigenous kids were dragged from their homes, shorn of their hair, and beaten if they spoke their native tongues—all to force them into submission to the state.
### THE PATRIOTISM OF THE REBELS
But the real patriots—the ones with true grit—chose a different path. The brave dames at Seneca Falls didn't just ask for the ballot; they took the Declaration of Independence and declared that "all men and women are created equal." And Frederick Douglass gave the nation the third degree in his historic 1852 speech, asking, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
These agitators didn't hate America; they held it to its own lofty promises. They saw the country not as a finished statue, but as a grand work in progress.
### THE REAL DOPE ON THE AP EXAM
In my years writing questions for the AP U.S. History exam, I’ve seen that this is the very tradition the College Board embraces. We don't peddle propaganda. One month, I’m hunting down a speech by a conservative woman from the 1980s; the next, a deep dive into the Gilded Age, or charts showing how trust in Uncle Sam took a nosedive after the Vietnam War.
We ask the kids to use their noodles, to look at the evidence from all sides—North and South, labor and capital, rich and poor. We don't ask them to love America less; we only ask them to understand her more.
But Florida’s "FACT U.S." is moving in the opposite direction. It wants the kids to love a cardboard cutout of America, treating historical crimes like slavery and the theft of Indian lands as mere speedbumps.
For the bosses in Tallahassee, America is a completed masterpiece, and a patriot is someone who stands at attention and asks no questions. But for the rest of us, history studied in earnest reveals an unfinished republic—and a fight that is far from over!
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**— ANDREW KORDIK**
*Schoolmaster of San Diego County & Scribe of the AP Exam*