Given the most recent round of dismal student achievement scores for math and English in public school districts across Colorado, it’s a safe bet our kids’ instruction in history and civics is lacking, as well.

Ask almost any middle- or high-schooler, however apt or diligent, for details about the drafting of the Constitution, the Civil War or other milestones of U.S. history. Or, ask about the structure of our federal government – the separation of powers, the role of the courts and all that.

You’ll likely get a blank stare.

So, it was all the more disappointing last week when the Colorado State Board of Education split along party lines and shot down the use of a new curriculum to restore basic knowledge about the profound individuals, institutions and developments that shaped our country and society.

Not “whitewashed” history, as some derisively refer to it. Rather, a warts-and-all rendering of historical dynamics that define and influence Americans to this day – regardless of race, creed, national origin or social or economic status. Our common heritage, in other words.

The board rejected the American Birthright curriculum, championed by Republican board member Deborah Scheffel and authored by the Civics Alliance. Its laudable aim is to push back at the “new civics” that has been creeping into our public schools.

The new civics is centered on some imagined global citizenship and its presumed mandate for global action – rather than on the underpinnings of American government, economics and society that make us who we really are. It’s the new fantasy vs. the old reality.

The Civics Alliance’s website elaborates: “American Birthright teaches about the expansion of American liberty to include all Americans, the contributions that Americans from every walk of life have made to our shared history of liberty, and America’s championship of liberty throughout the world,” the website says. “Students will learn of heroes of liberty such as Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan.”

Sounds like a curriculum many parents could get behind. Evidently, however, the mere mention of “liberty” – and perhaps also the country’s Republican 40th president – was enough to get the endeavor labeled “conservative.”

Hence, the thumbs-down from the board’s Democratic majority.

Alas, politics.

Lest anyone doubt that some kind of significant realignment is in order for the civics and history curricula of Colorado schools, consider what early-elementary students are being subjected to in the state’s largest school district, Denver’s.

As reported by education news service Chalkbeat Colorado, the kindergarten through second-grade reading curriculum in Denver Public Schools has dropped history-themed segments including, “Columbus and the Pilgrims,” “Colonial Towns and Towns People,” “Frontier Explorers,” “Westward Expansion” and “The U.S. Civil War.”

Why? One enthusiastic teacher interviewed by Chalkbeat explained, “the weaknesses are pretty glaring in that it’s very Eurocentric and (takes) a settler viewpoint.”

Just in case it’s unclear, that’s a reference to the settlers of predominantly European heritage who, for all their transgressions, founded the country in which we all now live – as well as the rest of the nations throughout North and South America. Without their “westward expansion,” the 98.3% of Coloradans who aren’t Native American, including Coloradans of African and Asian heritage – wouldn’t be here.

Love ’em or hate ’em, those settlers are pretty much central to understanding the Western Hemisphere for the past half millennium.

Except in Denver’s schools – where they’ve simply disappeared.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board