High school history teacher Katharina Matro often pulls materials from the Smithsonian Institution website as she assembles her lessons. She trusts its materials, which don’t require the same level of vetting as other online resources. She uses documents and other primary sources it curates for discussions of topics like genocide and slavery.
As the White House presses for changes at the Smithsonian, she’s worried she may not be able to rely on it in the same way.
“We don’t want a partisan history,” said Matro, a teacher in Bethesda, Maryland. “We want the history that’s produced by real historians.”
Far beyond museums in Washington, President Donald Trump’s review at the Smithsonian could influence how history is taught in classrooms around the country. The institution is a leading provider of curriculum and other educational materials, which are subject to the sweeping new assessment of all its public-facing content.
Trump is moving to bring the Smithsonian into alignment with his vision of American history. In a letter last month to the Smithsonian Institution, the White House said its review is meant to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.” It’s part of Trump’s agenda to “celebrate American exceptionalism” by removing “divisive or partisan narratives,” it said.
Those opposed to the changes fear they will promote a more sanitized version of American history.
In celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary next year, the Education Department recently launched the White House’s Founders Museum in partnership with PragerU, a conservative nonprofit that produces videos on politics and history. Visitors to the museum in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as well as the White House website, can read biographies on the signers of the Declaration of Independence and watch videos that depict them speaking.
“Real patriotic education means that just as our founders loved and honored America, so we should honor them,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a PragerU video introducing the project.
The project mentions some signers favoring abolition and includes Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who became the first published Black female poet in the U.S. But critics say it brushes over some of the nation’s darker past.
“Those are the kinds of things that teachers are really leery of because they don’t…