Do Public Schools Need a ‘Jan. 6 Insurrection’ Course?

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When Republicans have strong majorities in a state legislature, our national media often find their actions nationally controversial on issues like guns or transgender advocacy or DEI. When Democrats are dominant, the national media are fine with it. That’s just comforting business as usual.

In Virginia, with a Democrat majority in both houses and new Gov. Abby Spanberger, they have passed a bill prohibiting public schools from teaching that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a “peaceful protest” or that there was “extensive election fraud” in 2020. The bill requires any instruction on Jan. 6 to describe this “insurrection” as “an unprecedented, violent attack on U.S. democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives.”

The first objection is historical. Violent attacks at the Capitol are not “unprecedented.” Start with 1954, when five Puerto Rican terrorists shot into the House chamber, wounding five members of Congress (all survived). In 1998, a mentally disturbed man killed two Capitol Police officers and wounded another.

But secondly, why would it be considered necessary to teach a “unit” in history classes on Jan. 6? In the old days, American history classes often stopped a few decades shy of current events, perhaps to prevent school-board controversies over teachers pushing one political party’s recent talking points.

It’s obvious that the Democrats have attempted to transform one horrible afternoon into Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as Massively Historic Events, despite the small problem that the death toll isn’t comparable. Even the George Floyd riots in the previous summer carried a death toll of at least 25. Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee was rigidly constructed to avoid any and all comparisons to the 2020 race riots.

Even the Washington Post report on this bill sounds like Democrat legislative lingo: “Five people died during or in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and 140 police officers were assaulted as thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the complex to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.”

Nowhere in the Post article does it mention that one person was shot dead in the riot, Ashli Babbitt, by a Capitol Police officer. Three other Trump supporters died — of a stroke, a heart attack and an accidental drug overdose. This count includes Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who had a stroke after the riot, which the media wrongly presented as a violent death for months. The hardened Pelosi narrative excludes a lot of context.

Spanberger hasn’t commented on this bill yet, and this isn’t a national story. But there was a national media freakout in 2023 when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) installed a policy to prevent woke subjects like “critical race theory” from being promulgated in public schools. Back then, the spin was politicians shouldn’t get involved.

CNN anchor Sara Sidner protested: “So what if Critical Race Theory is in it? Who cares? Teach kids to think, not what to think.” MSNBC regular Jelani Cobb attacked “this heavy-handed diktat about what can be taught and what can’t be taught.” Then-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan mangled the actual policy in his cheap shot: “Under DeSantis, Florida has gone from don’t say gay to don’t say black.”

Politicians and parents can have some say in what public schools teach, just as they can have a say in what books are selected for the school library. But let’s not pretend that it’s an outbreak of righteousness and truth when Democrats do it and it’s dreadful censorship when Republicans do it.

Photo credit: Tyler Merbler at Wikimedia Commons