The uproar about Critical Race Theory in the Missouri Legislature ignores the larger issues of teaching secondary school. First, as Governor Mike Parsons pointed out, the standards for curriculum and instruction are the business of the local schools themselves, and more particularly school principals and their staff.

Second, the teaching of history is based on theories of history or the lenses through which we view historical events. The idea that critical race theory is the only theory used by teachers suggests a method of indoctrination. We should object if history is taught by indoctrination, whether it is critical race theory or by American exceptionalism, another disputed theory of American history. Unfortunately parents complain because they disagree with the historical lens, rather than that history is taught as a single interpretation and not  as multiple interpretations.

For example, there is the history of “urban redevelopment” in the Mill Creek neighborhood in St. Louis.  Without getting stuck in the weeds, there is one theory of history that the suggests the tearing down of “substandard” housing units and replacing them with the Daniel Boone Expressway was a primary example of urban renewal, creating routes for commerce by eliminating the worst property in the cities. This national transportation reform would be considered one of the greatest achievements of the Eisenhower administration. It is actually the version of history I was taught many years ago.

However, through another lens, “the wholesale destruction, population dispersion, and wanton speculation in the absence of any real plan pioneered on the St. Louis waterfront in 1939, taken to Washington by Harland Bartholomew, and epitomized in Mill Creek Valley stand out as evidence of the city’s leading role in the history of urban planning and racial removal in the United States.” The author goes on to explain that replacement housing was never directly provided for the residents of Mill Creek.  (Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, 309).

History is never a single story, and the identification of examples of those stories should be the primary goal of teaching American history in grades 6-12.  When history is taught through a single lens that is the dereliction of duty parents should protest, because it stunts critical thinking. They should want their students to graduate with a keen sense of how events are reported from a partisan viewpoint and how to identify the most persuasive version. That is the ultimate goal of secondary teaching of American history, not to teach the version that parents may happen to prefer.

The implications of critical race theory should be taught side by side with other theories of American history to be sure indoctrination is not taking place. Teachers may have their preferred theories, but they are charged with the responsibility to teach counter-theories, so that their biases may be balanced against other biased theories. That is how to avoid indoctrination.

That is not how I was taught history in high school and probably not the way most of you were taught history, but teachers today can do better. That is what we should argue and protest for, a critical approach. Not critical race theory, not American exceptionalism, but critical approaches that help our students survive through the dizzying versions of events in social media and partisan journalism.