New York, New York; May 1, 2024—The Civics Alliance has published the History of Communism Model State Standards. These standards provide guidelines for high school teachers to integrate the history of Communism into social studies courses. These standards will ensure that students know about the actual tyrannical nature of Communist thought, the blood-stained history of Communist regimes, and the influence of Communist ideology on American politics.
“On this May Day we seek to encourage education in history not with the grim displays of marching soldiers, tanks, and artillery common among Communist regimes, but with a new set of standards covering the breadth of Communism’s dark history,” said Civics Alliance executive director David Randall. “The History of Communism, when adopted into classrooms will teach the record of Communism, an activity often missed in American K-12 education.”
The History of Communism will ensure that K-12 social studies teachers know the full and terrible record of Communism and that they will bestow this knowledge to their students. These standards are also a template for the coverage Communist belief and history ought to receive in teacher education courses, textbooks, and teacher licensure.
Randall continued: “Too many of our children will cheer on quasi-Communist ideals and policies on this May Day. Too many unwittingly have embraced categories of Marxist thought, conveyed by vehicles such as Critical Race Theory or Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed,’ which divide humanity into Oppressor and Oppressed or regard the free market as fundamentally exploitative. They do so not least because they have never been taught in school just what Communism is or what massive destruction it has done.”
The History of Communism includes coverage of the sources and character of Communist ideology; the nineteenth century developments of Marxism; the Bolshevik Revolution; the history of various Communist regimes such as Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia; and the history of Communism among Western states.
“On May Day, our children should know to mourn the millions killed in the name of Communist revolutions. And they should know to dedicate themselves to preserving the liberties of our free republic against the repressions of Communism.”
The Civics Alliance is a national coalition of organizations and citizens dedicated to preserving and improving America’s civics education.
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If you would like more information about this issue, please contact David Randall, executive director of the Civics Alliance, at randall@nas.org.
