Letter: Our children are owed the truth

Sept. 7 -- To the editor:

I'm having trouble understanding the controversy about so-called "Critical Race Theory", to the point where Republicans in the NH Legislature felt compelled to create a law, backed by Education Commissioner Edelblut and signed by Governor Sununu, banning its existence in our schools. For reasons I find somewhat incomprehensible, they apparently object to having our teachers teach history, and other related subjects, based on actual facts, accounting for all the facts, not someone's modified version of the facts.

For way too long, textbooks and other materials used in our classrooms were limited in the type and extent of information provided.  Growing up in the mid-20th Century I learned about Thomas Jefferson, for example, but no-one ever told us that he was someone who bought and sold human beings and had fathered a whole family of mixed-race children. I don't recall anything about the Trail of Tears, stealing Native American land and exiling them into Reservations. We read a lot about the leaders on both sides of the Civil War, but little or nothing of the Articles of Secession and the editorials from Southern newspapers that made it clear the real reason for the conflict was to retain the institution of slavery.  I don't recall being taught about the so-called Draft Riots in NYC, federal immigration exclusion legislation, the use of US military against striking miners in Pennsylvania and Colorado, the internment of Japanese citizens at the start of WWII.  There wasn't much if any discussion I recall about the number of lynchings, the stories of white residents driving Black residents out of Wilmington, NC, Tulsa, OK, and other communities.  We learned a lot about Eisenhower, Patton, and the heroism of our soldiers fighting in Europe, but nothing about the discrimination in the military and in the administration of the GI Bill that continued until 1948 and beyond.

It wasn't until the advent of television and national coverage of the Vietnam War, the beatings of Civil Rights marchers in Selma and elsewhere, the killings at Kent State, that we could any longer ignore and deny what was happening, and although these events were really a continuation of a long chain of discrimination and misuse of government power…or the failure of government to act…

it took many, many years for public school educational materials to catch up and begin, finally, to tell the whole story.  Not made-up stuff, just "This is what actually happened, and we all need to know.",  and not be afraid to talk about it.

One of the very wisest of sayings is "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".  Unfortunately, we see that happening all too often around us today, and the bill passed by the NH legislature (and too many other States) is a good example.

We at least owe it to our children to tell them the truth, and support the role the dedicated teachers in our schools play in that.

Anthony McManus

Dover