Key Point #1
Arizona’s social studies standards omit nearly all emphasis on an understanding and appreciation of core constitutional principles.
Key Point #2
Arizona’s standards fail to educate students on the global, historical roots of institutions such as slavery and American actions to eliminate it.
Key Point #3
Arizona’s social studies standards fail to ensure students are exposed to the horrors of communism and related totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.
Key Point #4
Arizona’s social studies standards push activist terminology like “Latinx” and induce schools to incubate political activism among their students, rather than more disciplined civic literacy, in the form of “action civics.”
Introduction & Executive Summary
American civics education is in crisis. Surveys of civic literacy show that less than half of Americans can name all three branches of government, and a quarter cannot name any.[1] Only 22% of eighth graders score as proficient in civics knowledge nationally.[2] Political radicalism is seeping into school lesson plans, and students are advancing into higher education with little to no grounding in the principles of the American republic.
Arizona’s lawmakers have already noted such disheartening trends and passed HB 2008 in 2022, aiming to reinvigorate state standards in civic and historical education for Arizona’s public school students. Yet until the standards themselves are redesigned in accordance with this legislation, more Arizona public school students will continue to advance each year under an extraordinarily deficient framework of civic education.
Arizona’s commitment to parent-led school choice and variation in curricular models—particularly among private and at-home educational providers—rightly limits the reach of state-imposed learning outcomes, but government operated schools should, at a minimum, be able to ensure the transmission of basic knowledge in the mechanics and history of the United States. In short, to the extent that public school state standards do exist, they should not actively contribute to the deficits in civic knowledge and appreciation, but rather ensure that students encounter core topics and principles foundational to citizenship in the United States.
To that end, this report focuses on four key areas in which the current Arizona social studies standards are critically deficient and in need of immediate rehabilitation. Too many fundamental pieces of knowledge are totally absent, and too many critical topics for understanding America’s past and present are minimized:
- Arizona’s social studies standards omit nearly all emphasis on an understanding and appreciation of core constitutional principles. Concepts such as federalism are completely absent from high school social studies framework, leaving students unaware of core pillars such as the 10th Amendment and the primary importance of state rather than centralized political power under the Constitution.
- Arizona’s standards fail to educate students on the global, historical roots of institutions such as slavery and American actions to eliminate it. Such absences—including the complete omission of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation in the high school standards—induce schools to instead promote revisionist narratives such as the 1619 Project that portray slavery as a uniquely American evil still defining the nation today.
- Arizona’s social studies standards fail to ensure students are exposed to the horrors of communism and related totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Despite directing students to learn the impacts of the Cold War on “third world countries,” for instance, the standards indicate zero instruction related to the death toll or repression of populations within Marxist regimes. Such omissions leave students ignorant of the comparative prosperity and liberties secured under Western democratic capitalism.
- Arizona’s social studies standards push activist terminology like “Latinx” and induce schools to incubate political activism among their students, rather than more disciplined civic literacy, in the form of “action civics.”
The Arizona State Board of Education now has the opportunity—working in concert with the Arizona Department of Education and entities identified by state lawmakers in HB 2008—to undertake revitalization of Arizona’s public school social studies and civics standards to correct these and other deficiencies. It is essential that they do so.
Background
As American Enterprise Institute scholar Rick Hess observed in May 2022, when it comes to “what our eighth-graders know about U.S. history and civics, … the results are grim.”[3] Indeed, the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal that less than 1 in 4 American students are proficient in civics. As Hess notes of the latest scores, “this is the first time civics results declined significantly on the quarter-century-old exam.”
Less than 1 in 4 American students are proficient in civics.
How have we come to this state of affairs? A 2022 study from the RAND Corp. revealed that educators seem to be unclear on the purpose of teaching civics. For instance, fewer teachers (23%) thought that promoting knowledge of social, political, and civic institutions was among the top three aims of civics classes, compared to those (35%) who believed that promoting student activism via “participation in their community” was among the most important objectives.[4] Likewise, only 41% of educators said they were promoting knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities. It seems obvious that such priorities should rank among the top reasons to teach civics. Yet too many educators—often guided by politicized teacher preparation programs, curriculum coaches, and state departments of education to do the opposite—have forgotten that democratic republics are not self-perpetuating.
To help correct these deficits, Arizona became the first state in the nation to require high school students to demonstrate proficiency in civics by passing the U.S. citizenship exam.[5] The state likewise requires public school students in grades four through six to recite a portion of the Declaration of Independence on the first day of school,[6] and lawmakers most recently passed legislation sponsored by Rep. Quang Nguyen—HB 2008—in 2022 calling for the development of new civics standards, instruction on the founding principles of the United States, and a discussion of ideologies such as communism “that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy.”[7]
These actions reflect the growing consensus of urgency to improve civic education in Arizona and across the country. But until Arizona’s state standards are revised to implement these latest legislative mandates, more students will progress toward graduation each year devoid of sufficient immersion in civic knowledge and political history.
Arizona: Choice and Standards
Efforts to strengthen Arizona’s social studies standards must first of all recognize the fundamental importance of choice and variation in the state’s education landscape. It is essential that public charter schools retain the ability to craft distinctive curricula, representing a variety of learning models—whether STEM focused, classically oriented, or otherwise. Moreover, for the rapidly growing population of students on the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program or students otherwise engaged in private or at-home learning, government takeover of curricular programming remains a nonstarter.
Recognizing these pillars of Arizona’s education landscape, however, it is essential that state leaders ensure that publicly operated schools at least basically align with the fundamental principles of America’s constitutional republic.
The Role of State Social Studies Standards
Unlike in the subjects of reading, writing, and mathematics, the Arizona State Board of Education is prohibited from requiring public school students to pass statewide assessments based on the social studies standards.[8] (As described above, students must pass the U.S. citizenship test at least once before graduation, but beyond scoring sufficiently high on this one multiple-choice exam, students are not required to demonstrate proficiency in the broader related topics.) As a result, social studies standards of any kind act more as a guide than a mandate in the Grand Canyon state—even for public schools—but that guide still directly influences the curricula used for the more than one million public school students. Indeed, content that is emphasized in state standards is naturally more likely to appear in the educational programming of schools abiding by those standards. It is essential, therefore, that those standards promote rigorous civic knowledge.
With a revision to the state standards upcoming to comply with HB 2008, this report serves to shine a light on the shortcomings of the current standards so that Arizonans can be presented with social studies and civics standards that actually prepare students to be citizens who can help preserve the grand experiment in self-government started by America’s founding generation.
Section 1: Missing the Fundamentals of Our Constitutional Republic
The first series of critiques of the current standards has one primary theme, that the standards are simply inadequate in establishing baseline knowledge of U.S. civics by only vaguely alluding to or completely omitting several concepts fundamental to the American republic.
Federalism Goes Missing in Arizona Standards
For instance, despite being one of the central organizing principles of the American constitutional framework, the term federalism makes no appearance in the Arizona high school standards. Whether or not the new American government would be more federal or more national was the primary focus of many early debates on the Constitution. Federalist No. 39, for example, takes significant care to describe the unique blend of the proposed government as “national” and “federal,” addressing the concern that the states would be overrun by a unitary national government.[9]
Awareness of the term federalism and familiarity with the arguments made in Federalist No. 39 and the context for why people feared an overpowered federal government should be included in any expected baseline of high school knowledge. Not only would this equip students to better understand and defend the core framework of our republic today, but also it would increase students’ understanding of where most government policies are determined. The current failure to learn of federalism induces citizens to lobby Congress for one-size-fits-all solutions to complex problems. As shown most recently by the disastrous consequences of near nationwide school closures during COVID 19, for instance—contrasted with the success of state-based approaches such as Florida’s—such policy conformity frequently results in far worse outcomes than respecting each state as a “laboratory of democracy.”
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
In addition to outright omissions such as that above, the standards likewise fall short in achieving their desired intent when it comes to presenting other key concepts, including the basic term republic. Clearly, the writers of the current standards recognized the importance of our constitutional republic, as evidenced by standard HS.C1.1, for example, which calls for students to be able to “explain the significance of civic virtues to a well-functioning constitutional republic.”[10]
But as written, the standards have been allowed to be interpreted broadly enough by school districts that the state’s third-largest district, Tucson Unified, for instance, utilized the following documents during the COVID pandemic to convey “the components of a well-functioning constitutional republic” in keeping with the state standards: “Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution,” “The Constitution and the Political Legacy of Slavery,” “Malcolm X’s The Ballot or the Bullet,” and “Recalling Trayvon Martin and the Birth of Black Lives Matter.”[11]
To their credit, the standards do include certain broad statements regarding the “powers, responsibilities, and limits” of government (HS.C3.1), a nod to the existence of state governments (HS.C3.2) and a call for a comparison of the rights guaranteed in the Arizona and federal constitutions (HS.C2.6), but again, even such standards can be fairly easily satisfied without ever meaningfully introducing students to the organizing principles such as federalism.
Rights of the Governed
Another omission related to the nation’s basic framework is that of unenumerated rights. Item HS.C2.3 of the state’s high school social studies standards calls on students to “Evaluate the evolution of ideals and rights established in historical documents, legislation, executive actions, and court cases.” While seemingly innocuous, such items help reinforce a notion at odds with America’s founding principles. Our founding documents are specifically predicated on the notion that government exists to protect and recognize already-held rights, not that rights are simply “established in legislation” as though a gift bestowed by the government. The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which explicitly declares “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”—is frequently ignored by the federal judiciary, but it should not be ignored by our civics standards.
The standards also fail to direct any education on the origins of the rights considered important enough to be listed in the Constitution. Every measure in the Bill of Rights was included as a response to specific acts of tyranny that the American colonists had endured, with the intent to never have to experience such encroachments on liberty again. This goes beyond the First Amendment’s guarantees of expression. Citizens ought to know they have a right to bear arms for defense of the state and their own liberty. They have the right to a public trial with a verdict handed down by a jury of their peers to defend against false charges, immoral laws, and politically motivated prosecutions. Our property is not protected from officers simply to make law enforcement more challenging; the Fourth Amendment exists to keep the state from harassing innocent people out of particular malice and arbitrary tyranny. Knowing these things will help protect the students from becoming voters who surrender their rights out of ignorance, inviting injustice.
Section 2: Race & Slavery
The current standards provide virtually no grounding in core topics related to the history of race and slavery that are necessary to present students an accurate understanding of these issues, especially at the high school level. There is no mention of President Lincoln or his achievements there (including the Emancipation Proclamation), nor any acknowledgement of the global history of slavery. With the lack of such content in the standards, activists nationwide have filled the vacuum with materials aligned instead with Critical Race Theory (CRT)—such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project—and begun teaching a distorted narrative of race that promotes a worldview of perpetual victimhood and collective guilt.[12]
Materials like the 1619 Project would have students believe that the prevailing reason for America’s fight for independence was to preserve the institution of slavery.[13] This is plainly false, not only because Britain still allowed for and heavily profited from slavery at the time of the Revolutionary War, but also because there are well-documented grievances against the British Parliament that have nothing to do with slavery—in addition to colonists’ grievances that blame Parliament for forcing slave economics on the colonies.[14] A proper education on the Declaration of Independence, which is not referenced at all in the high school standards, or the aforementioned origins of the Bill of Rights would make clear that claims such as those of the 1619 Project are grossly misleading and false.
Forgetting Lincoln
The absence of core knowledge regarding slavery likewise leaves students unequipped to confront various other contemporary revisionist narratives. For instance, by omitting Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and federalism, the high school standards fail to ensure that students understand the significance and constitutional fidelity of the actions taken by the 16th president to limit slavery, leaving students susceptible to manipulated narratives such as one recently promulgated to high school-aged children via a Disney clip showing a teacher and his pupils having the following exchange:
“The Emancipation proclamation only applied to confederate states. Union border states were not required to abolish slavery.”
“So it’s true, Lincoln really didn’t care about freeing enslaved people.”
“Actually, he wanted to deport us.”
“Why are we just learning this? This should be the first sentence of his biography.”[15]
As students of history are aware, while the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery, it was limited by the fact that Lincoln simply did not have the power under the Constitution to abolish slavery through executive action (no president ever had this power). Still, Lincoln actively supported the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. The standards’ failure to advocate for such historical nuance—or mention, for instance, the evolution of Lincoln’s views on issues of race after meeting Frederick Douglass—contribute to the void of civic ignorance of American institutions and heroes.
Failing to Teach Students the History of Slavery
In addition to the specific individuals and events that are omitted, the standards fail to ensure that students are taught of the global, historical scope of slavery—an omission that further contributes to students believing it was a uniquely American social evil rather than a scourge that has existed across civilizations throughout human history. To their credit, the standards do ostensibly reference the slave trade outside of the continental United States, calling for study of “interregional interactions including but not limited to European exploration, the trans-African and trans-Atlantic slave systems, and land and oceanic trade systems.” But even this definition allows for students to be taught little more than that slaves were brought to the United States from across the Atlantic rather than informing them that slavery’s roots span across continents, cultures, and millennia. Absent this knowledge, narratives like the 1619 Project leave students with a radically distorted view of the United States by asserting slavery was America’s “original sin” and “true origin” rather than a widespread human evil.[16]
Indeed, proponents of the 1619 Project and CRT would like to claim that Antebellum American chattel slavery was a unique evil, when it simply was not.[17] But because the standards focus only on the slave trade from the early modern period, they allow for that revisionist narrative to take root. Arizona’s students should instead be taught that the modern efforts to abolish slavery are actually what is unique, not that slavery is America’s defining feature.
Slavery was practiced in ancient Rome, Greece, Persia, Egypt, Sumeria, Israel, the Islamic Caliphates, China, Mesoamerica, and Oceania—and many millions of people have lived as slaves. The exact figures need not be included in the standards, but a true education on the full scope and oppression of slavery would include mention of the millions of slaves who built the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids at Giza; or that chattel slavery bound 30% of Korea’s population in the 15th century;[18] or that the word “slave” finds its origin in the ethnonym “Slav” because of how common it was for the medieval world to encounter Eastern Europeans only as slaves.[19]
The success of various abolition movements in the 19th century were monumental achievements in human moral development, not a correction back to the status quo. There is no need to minimize the evils of slavery in America, but there is also no need to rewrite history to make Americans seem uniquely evil. Instead of being fed corrupted narratives like the 1619 Project, Arizona students ought to be encountering Frederick Douglass’ ultimate appraisal of the Constitution as a “glorious liberty document” that helped to inspire the push for freedom that is the right of all persons.[20]
Section 3: Failing to Differentiate American Exceptionalism from Communism and Regimes Abroad
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”[21]
While it is important to take an unflinching look at America’s failings, it is also necessary to provide points of comparison with other nations past and present so students can fully appreciate the gift and promise of American citizenship. Failing to do so forsakes millennia of human progress built upon the work of generations of free people.
The current standards for high schoolers do not adequately call for this kind of evaluation. While the standards do at least include a passing reference encouraging students to “compare [the American government] with other systems of government,”[22] there is no specific mention of monarchy, autocracy, theocracy, direct and representative democracies, etc. As part of the oldest representative federal republic, Arizona’s youths should be aware of other methods of governance to know why the American system is so special and, ideally, appreciate that liberty is preferable to authoritarianism. While a small fraction of students may encounter such topics in courses like AP Comparative Government and Politics, such classes are optional and remain outside the core studies of most students.
Failing to Teach Students the Evils of Communism
A related problem that needs to be addressed in the current standards concerns education about communism and the Cold War. The standards include vague references to the “spread of communism” and the “Russian Revolution, Latin American Revolutions, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” but beyond these, the only detailed standard dealing with communism is as follows: “The Cold War including origins, the emergence of the Soviet Union and communist China, conflicts such as the Korean War, space race, arms race, and its impact on third world countries, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact on the international community.”[23]
At a glance, this may suggest an adequate survey of communism’s legacy in the 20th century. But in reality this means that while the standards require teaching on the impacts of the Cold War on third world countries, the standards require no instruction on the realities of living directly under the Soviet regime or atrocities such as the Holodomor. Indeed, students could satisfy the standards’ recommendations without ever encountering content such as the Library of Congress’ “Revelations from the Soviet Archives: Internal Workings of the Soviet Union,” a collection of letters from Soviet citizens that describe the horrors of gulags, mass starvation, and political executions under Soviet rule.[24]
It is critical that students grapple with such historical realities—lest they learn only sanitized narratives about the theory behind communism and never learn from those who experienced it in practice. This is especially necessary as Americans are increasingly reminded of the ways in which our own nation has not always lived up to its ideals. While it is of course necessary to understand our own nation’s shortcomings, such self-reflection cannot be accompanied by solely idealized versions of ideologies that are in fundamental conflict with those of our founding.
As discussed above, Arizona lawmakers have also recognized the standards’ deficiency when it comes to education about communism: Arizona’s 2022 legislation, HB 2008, includes a new mandate for a “comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy.”[25] State leaders now have a prime opportunity to ensure this reform is incorporated into the standards.
Section 4: Civic Knowledge vs. Action Civics
In addition to the specific topic areas mentioned above, the standards also encourage the displacement of useful civic knowledge with the increasingly popular leftwing education approach, “action civics.”
Sold as a way to make civics more engaging and relevant to kids, action civics deemphasizes civic literacy and instead encourages students to identify and advocate for public policies in their city, state, or nation. In theory, the latter half of such an approach could help connect more abstract classroom topics with real-world applications, but unlike a science teacher conducting an experiment with their students, action civics harnesses class time to engage students in forms of political agitation. At its core, the action civics approach represents raw political activism, giving cover for educators seeking to infuse social studies instruction with ideologically driven endeavors.
To their credit, Arizona’s social studies standards avoid explicitly calling for such ideological activism, yet for all of the standards’ omissions, they do still find the space to encourage students to engage in action-oriented civics learning, calling on students to “assess options for action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.”[26]
The result of such pedagogy—particularly when students lack basic civic literacy to inform their energies—is to thrust young kids into public life without educating them on the nation they are supposedly meant to change. Moreover, such education models routinely devolve into the politically driven activation of students on behalf of nakedly partisan or political causes. Most recently, for instance, union-aligned activist educators involved students in protesting school choice legislation in Arkansas in March 2023, with pupils encouraged to join a school walkout.[27] Instead of benefitting from valuable education time, they were sent to protest against a democratic effort to make quality education more attainable for all families.
Rather than diluting the limited time and resources available for civics-based instruction by promoting vague “disciplinary skills and processes” like action civics, Arizona’s standards should provide clear, simple, guidance on a baseline level of historical and civics-based knowledge expected to be taught by our public schools.
Arizona’s students deserve to know the structure of their government, the foundational ideas of said government, the nature of their rights and responsibilities within civic life, and what makes life in America such a desirable thing that people routinely brave wild oceans and vast deserts just for the chance to live here.
Arizona’s students deserve to know the structure of their government, the foundational ideas of said government, the nature of their rights and responsibilities within civic life, and what makes life in America such a desirable thing that people routinely brave wild oceans and vast deserts just for the chance to live here.
Unfortunately, the current standards fail to promote such learning, opting to instead advance an activist-led vision of American social studies. For instance, the “Third Grade – Fifth Grade” section of the standards identifies the term “Latinx” as a required concept, but designates Abraham Lincoln an optional figure.[28] Specifically, standard 3.H1.1 directs schools to discuss “cultures and innovations [that] have influenced history and continue to impact the modern world,” declaring that “Key concepts include but are not limited to…Latinx.” In contrast, the same third-through-fifth-grade-level standards declare in 5.SP2.1 that “key individuals and groups can include but are not limited to a loyalist and patriots, federalist and anti-federalist, Hamilton and Jefferson, abolitionists and slave owners, Abraham Lincoln and John C. Calhoun…” (emphasis added). In other words, “Latinx”—a politically activist term rejected as offensive by the majority of the Hispanic population[29]—is listed as a mandatory key concept, while President Lincoln—who, as noted previously in the report, disappears entirely from the standards by high school—is merely one of many figures who can be included in instruction.
Conclusion
As made clear in this report, the state’s social studies standards require an overhaul, and Arizona lawmakers were right to pass HB 2008 in 2022 calling for significant revision. Fortunately, more promising models for improvement do exist. The Goldwater Institute has endorsed, for instance, the American Birthright Model K-12 Social Studies Standards from the National Association of Scholars’ Civics Alliance. Such standards not only excise the radicalism from many states’ contemporary standards, but also emphasize primary sources so that students can learn for themselves the principles and history upon which America was built.
Civics education is not simply about nebulous skills such as critical thinking. A student is not prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship if he or she cannot grasp the nature and role of government, the structure of America’s federal system, and the philosophical bases of republics.
While national metrics may paint a dire portrait of K-12 civics literacy, Arizona has long been a leader in educational reform, and state education officials now have the opportunity to revitalize the state’s social studies standards for the better. Our public schools exist to transmit core knowledge to over one million students, and as long as any such standards are used to guide that instruction, it is essential they promote the basic knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the American experiment now approaching its 250th year.
End Notes
[1] Americans’ Civics Knowledge Drops on First Amendment and Branches of Government, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, September 13, 2022, https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-drops-on-first-amendment-and-branches-of-government/.
[2] Twenty-Two Percent of Eighth-Graders at or above NAEP Proficient in Civics, The Nation’s Report Card, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, accessed May 16, 2023, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/civics/results/achievement/.
[3] Rick Hess, “America’s Students Flunk Civics and U.S. History on Nation’s Report Card,” American Enterprise Institute, May 3, 2023, https://www.aei.org/op-eds/americas-students-flunk-civics-and-u-s-history-on-nations-report-card/.
[4] Melissa Kay Diliberti and Julia Kaufman, “How Are U.S. Public School Teachers Approaching Civic and Citizenship Education?” RAND Corporation, 2022, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA112-23.html.
[5] “Arizona Becomes the First State to Require High School Students to Pass U.S. Citizenship Test,” Fox News, December 30, 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/world/arizona-becomes-the-first-state-to-require-high-school-students-to-pass-u-s-citizenship-test.amp; Arizona Revised Statutes Section 15-701.01, https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/15/00701-01.htm.
[6] Arizona Revised Statutes Section 15-203, https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/15/00203.htm.
[7] House Bill 2008, Engrossed, Fifty-Fifth Arizona Legislature, Second Regular Session, 2022, https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/laws/0303.pdf.
[8] Arizona Revised Statutes Section 15-741, https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/15/00741.htm.
[9] The Federalist Papers: No. 39, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed39.asp.
[10] Arizona History and Social Science Standards: High School, Arizona Department of Education, 2018,
[11] Matt Beienburg, “Schools Ought to Be Teaching Our Founding Principles,” February 5, 2021, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/schools-ought-to-be-teaching-our-founding-principles.
[12] John Murawski, “No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Here’s the Abundant Evidence Saying Otherwise,” RealClear Investigations, December 21, 2021, https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/12/22/no_critical_race_theory_in_schools_heres_the_abundant_evidence_saying_otherwise_808528.html; John Murawski, “Disputed NY Times ‘1619 Project’ Already Shaping Schoolkids’ Minds on Race,” RealClear Investigations, January 31, 2020, https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/31/disputed_ny_times_1619_project_is_already_shaping_kids_minds_on_race_bias_122192.html.
[13] Phillip Magness, “The 1619 Project Unrepentantly Pushes Junk History,” Reason, May 2022, https://reason.com/2022/03/29/the-1619-project-unrepentantly-pushes-junk-history/.
[14] “Jefferson’s ‘Original Rough Draught’ of the Declaration of Independence, 11 June–4 July 1776,” National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004.
[15] “The Proud Family Louder and Prouder – Juneteenth Exclusive Clip,” Disney Television Animation News, January 31, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUvCZDHfBU.
[16] Jake Silverstein, “Why We Published The 1619 Project,” New York Times Magazine, December 20, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/magazine/1619-intro.html.
[17] “1619,” The New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2019, https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf.
[18] Dan Mclaughlin, “American Slavery in the Global Context,” National Review, January 6, 2022, https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/01/24/american-slavery-in-the-global-context/.
[19] Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, Accessed May 16, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave.
[20] Timothy Sandefur, “Frederick Douglass’s ‘Glorious Liberty Document,’” Goldwater Institute, February 13, 2020, https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/frederick-douglasss-glorious-liberty-document/.
[21] Winston Churchill, November 11, 1947 Address, International Churchill Society, February 25, 2016, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/.
[22] Arizona History and Social Science Standards.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Revelations from the Soviet Archives: Internal Workings of the Soviet Union
(Library of Congress), excerpted by the Center for Political Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Accessed May 16, 2023, https://cptl.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-06/Q108%20Revelations%20from%20the%20Soviet%20Archives_CPTL.pdf.
[25] House Bill 2008.
[26] Arizona History and Social Science Standards.
[27] Cory Evans, “Little Rock Central High School Students Walk Out in Response to Arkansas LEARNS Bill,” ABC7, March 3, 2023, https://katv.com/news/local/little-rock-central-high-school-students-walk-out-in-response-to-arkansas-learns-bill-gov-sarah-huckabee-sanders-student-council-the-young-leftists-and-the-naacp.
[28] Arizona History and Social Science Standards: Third Grade – Fifth Grade, Arizona Department of Education, 2018, https://www.azed.gov/sites/default/files/2018/10/3-5%20Grade%20Band%20Standards%20at%20a%20Glance%206.10.19.pdf?id=5bd772a61dcb250b94e916ef.
[29] Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, “Many Latinos Say ‘Latinx’ Offends or Bothers Them. Here’s Why,” NBC News, December 14, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latinx-offends-or-bothers-them-here-s-ncna1285916.
