The Success of Hillsdale’s “1776 Curriculum”

Since its unveiling in 2021, Hillsdale College’s “1776 Curriculum,” has significantly influenced curriculum in a growing number of states and is helping break the left’s ideological stranglehold on the education system.

The Ashley River Classical Academy, a K-12 charter school that will open in Charleston, South Carolina this August, is just one example of the impact of Hillsdale’s curriculum and commitment to reforming American education. The school will be committed to a “classical American education” that prioritizes traditional instruction in core subjects like science, math, and history.

Ashley River is just one of the dozens of charter schools that Hillsdale is looking to plant around the country – all of which can use, particularly in history and government, the 1776 Curriculum as a resource. Tennessee has invited Hillsdale to build up to 50 such schools in the Volunteer State if they see the demand through parents and individual communities.

Republican leaders in other states have also turned to academics who contributed to the 1776 Curriculum to help reform their own education standards. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asked Hillsdale professors to review his state’s history curriculum, while South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem introduced new history standards that borrowed heavily from Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum back in 2022.

Left-wing opponents of the curriculum have predictably smeared it as “racist” and accused its proponents of ignoring ugly truths about American history like slavery and segregation.

In truth, however, the 1776 Curriculum, which spans some 2,400 pages and includes extensive lesson plans for K-12 students, mentions slavery some 3,000 times, along with other detailed discussions of instances where the United States did not live up to its founding promise.

The curriculum’s critics seem most upset at the fact that it breaks with the education establishment’s obsession with race, class, and gender – what can be called the “holy trinity” of the modern education system.

Instead, the 1776 Curriculum focuses on the ideological roots of the American Revolution and the ideas and principles of the American Founders as they understood themselves, along with primary-source documents telling the story of American history. Some of the topics covered in-depth in the curriculum include Roger Williams’s efforts to establish religious tolerance in Rhode Island, Paul Revere’s ride, what it was like to be an African slave during the Middle Passage to the New World, and the Great Awakening in the American colonies.

More than just a historical study, however, the 1776 Curriculum attempts to provide a concrete sense of identity for American students – something that is missing in the lessons taught in many schools today. Upon release of the curriculum, Hillsdale President Larry P. Arnn noted that the struggles Americans face today with their sense of national identity are similar to the ones experienced by Americans at the founding. “The founding controversy affected all Americans’ understanding of who they were,” he said.

The 1776 Curriculum also offers explicit rebuttals to revisionist history like the notion that the founders were only interested in preserving the institution of slavery or expanding their own personal wealth. It affirms that the colonists “desired freedom to better their conditions” since “the degree of opportunity not seen in Europe for the ordinary person was unprecedented.”

The curriculum also explains the history of the abolition movement and how practices like slavery have shaped American history. Above all, it is a celebration of the idea of America and all the progress that has been made toward realizing the country’s founding promise.

“The pursuit of truth is an unapologetic pursuit. For those who strive for honesty, it cannot be otherwise,” said Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, who led the project.

Ultimately, the truth that shines through in the 1776 Curriculum is one that British historian Paul Johnson revealed to me in an interview just one month after the 9/11 attacks: “The foundation of the United States, being the greatest of all human adventures, holds tremendous lessons for the American people and the rest of mankind.”

Three of those lessons, Johnson said, are as follows: “that the nation could atone for past injustices by creating a society dedicated to justice and fairness; that the founders successfully balanced idealistic altruism with ambition, forging a new nation; and that Americans raised a ‘Shining City Upon a Hill,’ which, despite censors and other hostile efforts, is admired by millions worldwide.”

The Hillsdale curriculum underscores this view, and, as Dr. Arnn stressed, it is “an invitation to students, parents, and schools to educate the next generations in liberty.”

With a critical round of elections this coming November, Americans should choose more leaders who will accept this invitation and decisively turn the tide against the forces of indoctrination and falsehood in American education.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.