(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Hillsdale College has secured $32 million in funding to start 50 charter schools in Tennessee that will teach the Western tradition and the “1776 Curriculum,” which proclaims America to be an “exceptionally good country,” Breitbart reported.
Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative currently provides curriculum and operational assistance to 24 charter schools in 13 states, though the schools largely function on their own in line with Hillsdale’s emphasis on independence.
“For decades, Hillsdale College has been the standard-bearer in quality curriculum and in the responsibility of preserving American liberty,” said Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee. “I believe their efforts are a good fit for Tennessee.”
The liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan—which refuses to accept federal funding—requires that all students take courses on the Constitution, classical literature, and American and Western heritage.
The New York Times launched the “1619 Curriculum” that prompted Hillsdale’s educational response, and it labeled Hillsdale’s charter school push an effort to fight “leftist academics.”
The far-left paper said the college is “pushing the boundaries on the use of taxpayer money for politically tinged education.”
“I’ve been following charter schools over the last 25 years, and I’ve never seen a governor attempting to use charters in such an overtly political way,” University of California – Berkeley education and public policy professor Bruce Fuller told the Times.
Hillsdale College has no political affiliations as a non-profit institution, but it does resist the academic trends that define mainstream American institutions, including universities, corporate media, and most big corporations.
President Larry Arnn wants to turn students into good citizens who will help to create a good country.
“Great harm is done by bad laws, and great good by good laws,” Arnn said. “We are citizens. We have an obligation to our fellow citizens and an interest for ourselves to make the laws as good as they can be.”
The college rejects the Progressive narratives surrounding the Civil War—that America is inherently racist—the New Deal and the Great Society—that new government programs saved the United States— as well as newer academic innovations like the critical race theory and transgenderism.
It teaches an original understanding of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, considers most American Founders to be pro-equality and anti-slavery, and asserts that the progressive and radical Leftists are attempting to expand government’s power and reduce citizens to dependence and servility.
