This should surprise no one, and it’s yet another reason for educational liberty:
Although conservatives reflexively assume race, class and gender dominate American history, there is now incontrovertible evidence that this assumption is true. In a careful study of U.S. history courses at the University of Texas and Texas A & M University, the National Association of Scholars recently released report indicates that race, class and gender tend to crowd out the teaching of other perspectives. This form of thematically skewed teaching leads to an incomplete knowledge of American history, an ignorance transmitted from one generation to the next.
Eighty three percent of the U.T. faculty members teaching these courses received their PhD’s in the 1990’s or later and had race, class and gender (RCG) research interests. Hence it is hardly surprising that 78 percent of U.T. faculty members were high assigners of readings in these three areas. Moreover, an inordinate focus on RCG isn’t the only problem since this emphasis subordinates other aspects of the national history. In these general American history courses, key documents from the past such as the Mayflower Compact or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address were not assigned. Only one faculty member assigned “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and only one assigned Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
