With a program that includes slavery, civil war, reconstruction, two world wars and the civil rights movement, American history teachers are used to venturing into matters loaded with emotion. Students who walk through the disturbing complexities of the past have never been easy work. But while the story is about to take the spotlight in 2026 for 250th birthday celebrations From the foundation of the nation, there are growing signs that the teaching work of the country's past has become more difficult than ever.
In a survey last year of more than 3,000 social studies teachers across the country, the American History Association revealed that teachers of kindergarten history in the 12th year feel underestimated and isolated, of a combination of dull engagement of students – an obstinate hhedver of the pandemic – persistent budget cuts that refuse them the essential professional development, and a frustrating feeling that do not respect what they do.
According to the report, “American course plan: teach the history of the United States in secondary schools”, “ 16% of teachers said they had received frequent criticisms or more criticisms from parents or other in the way they teach history. About 40% said they had to respond to such a decline at least once or twice.
Some teachers have opposed these figures, claiming that they minimize the political stresses that many of them undergo, explains Brendan Gillis, director of teaching and learning the association, who supervised the study. He concedes that the percentages seem weak, but it is because they reflect only a very close objective of what is happening in classrooms, excluding the more widespread peripheral pressures which can indirectly injure teachers.
“Many more places have seen efforts to remove books from libraries or to prohibit certain titles, which have an effect for history teachers, but it is less specifically focused on what is happening in history classrooms,” said Gillis. “But, yes, in the end, if more people, more Americans understood what teachers teach in history classrooms, they would have a very different attitude on how to solve some of the problems of public education.”
The AHA report came out at the end of 2024, before President Donald Trump took office. Conditions have not improved for social studies teachers since then. One of Trump's first decrees The claimed schools use “radical indoctrination” To print “anti-American, subversive, harmful and false ideologies” on children.
Although the AHA researchers stressed, they found no “indoctrination, politicization or deliberate professional fault”, the heavy political rhetoric of the teachers of the White House, explains Emma Humphries, former history teacher and now director of education in the Defense group of Inivics Civic Services.
“These are people who have entered the profession because they love our country, they love our history, they love our founding ideals, they like our constitution and they want to cultivate this same kind of love and attachment to their students,” says Humphries. “This does not mean that they simply paint this perfect and pink image as if we have never made mistakes, because, goodness knows, we have as a country our shortcomings and our mistakes. But we always strive towards this more perfect union.”
“It's frustrating and I would even say demoralizing when it seems that politicians do not understand this,” adds Humphries.
The painting of the approaches of history in black and white austere can stop the debate and prevent teachers of social studies from achieving what 94% of them report is the most important part of their work: the preparation of students for a significant civic commitment.
“I think there are things that teachers stay away because they are afraid that it causes them a kind of problem – and one of the things is the news,” said Samantha Futrell, professor of social studies at College in Richmond, Virginia. “We feel so polarized at the moment.”
Michelle Nystel, who teaches social studies in high school in a small district in northeast of Iowa, has to work harder lately to prevent students from falling into polarized camps: “It becomes less likely that I have children who are open-minded and do not only say what their family says.”
Sources under control
And polarization now threatens the main sources of information for teachers. The researchers were surprised to learn, says Gillis, that the most used sources of historical information are not textbooks but online sites managed by museums and the federal government, in particular the Smithsonian, the Congress Library and the National Archives. More than 80% of teachers say they use information from these government institutions in the context of their lessons.
“Manuals clearly decrease influence,” said the AHA report. Some 32% of teachers said they did not use one. The textbooks are expensive, heavy and need update, so less district budget for them, says Gillis. Online government sources, on the other hand, are free, up to date and reliable to be accurate and not partisan.
Or rather, they were a few weeks ago. The Trump administration has recently targeted the web of government's web pages for revision in the context of its campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion. The changes are “quite alarming,” says Gillis.
A March 27 Executive Decree Accused of Smithsonian sites, including the American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, of giving a “distorted story led by ideology”, throwing the “founding principles and historical stages of the country in a negative light”. He orders the vice-president JD vance to supervise the scanning rewritings.
At the beginning of April, the Washington Post reported The fact that the National Park Service has considerably rewritten the web pages on the underground railway and the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, replacing a detailed account on the African-Americans enslaved by a shorter description which never mentions slavery.
A Post previous investigation noted that the Ministry of Defense had served online articles on the Amerindians who made contributions in wartime, including the famous speakers of the Navajo Code of the Second World War and the Tonawanda Seneca officer who wrote the terms of the surrender of the Confederation to Appomattox in 1865.
Defense History Pages underline the contributions of women in the army Were among many that were drawn for more than a week to be stripped of any reference to diversity.
Although purged materials have been restored later, that the formerly beaten sites can be politicized is a frightening perspective for history teachers.
“It's disabling,” says Futrell. “We have trained students to see these sites issued by the federal government as truly reliable narrators in American history. So when there is an involvement from a political point of view in what is supposed to be non -partisan sources, it becomes very tenuous to use these things in class. ”
It is not only that teachers must find new non -partisan sources. They must now explain the limits of the sources compromised to their students – a difficult and nuanced discussion that distracts from their main program.
“It creates much more work for educators,” says Futrell. “It is essentially our teaching time.”
In addition, interfere with sources of trust raises deeper questions about the authenticity and merits of the study.
“The play with which I fight as a educator is how do you teach the truth when the truth is very relative?” Nystel asks: “When people in the world can make the truth everything they want the truth to be?”
Nystel points to The recent reduction of the national endowment for the financing of the human sciences as a blow of a good history. She used NEH subsidies to attend professional development workshops that have improved her teaching, a significant advantage in a large state where teachers often have to travel up to six round trip to meet their peers.
Among the NEH subsidies canceled, there were more than $ 300,000 for National History DayThe annual competition which is human science equivalent to a national scientific fair. The History Day Foundation plans to continue this year's program and launched a fundraising campaign to compensate for the lost subsidy.
All these cups, revisions and political directives on American history have thrown a long shadow on teachers' preparations for the country's 250th anniversary celebrations next year, when the spotlights should study our past in all its complex beauty and its faults, Humphries at Icivics. It is only students that students can care about the founding principles of the country and better appreciate our government system.
“When you learn history, it establishes this kind of greatest link with her country,” she adds, “what would lead someone to be more committed to civic and political life.”
