Recently, as a response to widespread use of The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine feature exploring the often untold realities of America’s long history of policies and practices endorsing and even promoting enslaving fellow humans, President Trump announced the establishment of the 1776 Commission, a federal focus on “patriotic education” which, it seems, will not address the negative or troubling realities of our country’s past.

I am not afraid to show my bias against this commission. I’ve read some of the criticism of The 1619 Project. Some is valid, some is overwrought. None is sufficient to warrant our country’s ignoring of the fact of enslavement and the observable, measurable, identifiable historical ripple effect it had right up to this very second.

A good history (or literature) teacher will encourage students to interrogate what isn’t being said, whose side isn’t being shared, whose voice isn’t being elevated. What is absent is telling, always. What we choose not to teach is as political a choice as what we choose to teach. And to take it further, the deliberate omission of the truth is a much a lie as is the truth’s deliberate revision.

Good teaching has to involve the true, observable, and documented flaws of our country alongside the great achievements and innovations. Sure, we can and should celebrate achievements, but ignoring the less rosy truths will not make us great (again). It is truth that enslavement of human beings by Americans took place and was sanctioned and enforced by law in our country, all the way up to the top. It is truth that our government engaged in systematic relocation and elimination of indigenous peoples. It is truth that not all humans have been treated equally, that the founders did not intend for all humans to be treated equally (if they did, then why not codify it?), and that those inequalities persist. It is fantasy to think that complete equality magically manifested upon the emancipation of the enslaved or the achievement of women’s suffrage or the elimination of legal discrimination by race. It is fantasy to believe that the changing of policy instantly changes the minds, hearts, and behaviors of the population steeped in the inherited unwritten social codes once promoted and reinforced by such policies.

Whether we include those truths, espouse those fantasies, or ignore the topics altogether, each is a political choice. This recent Harvard Gazette interview with historian Donald Yacovone, an associate at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, offers an interesting deconstruction of how history books at the birth of our nation shaped society’s collective perception and identity not through what was included, but what was excluded. And political trigger warning, Yacovone comes right out and says that he believes our founding fathers were white supremacists. (Which, by any possible definition of the term short of Klan membership, they were. It doesn’t mean we cannot appreciate the ideals upon which the country was founded, but a close read of any seminal text of our nation makes pretty clear who the nation was being built for, and by glaring omission, who was not intended to reap the benefits of the American experiment.)

And as I ramble about teaching being political, I do think it is worth noting: a while back, I wrote a post about how saying that “Black lives matter” is not political speech in the classroom. In a way, I was wrong. My position has grown more nuanced in the months since that original post. Saying “Black lives matter” in my classroom is as political a gesture as not saying it. My own district has stated publicly that Black lives matter. They have received backlash for this “political move.” Not saying anything would have been likewise political, but just perhaps more palatable to those with the most privileged mouthpieces.

Both action and inaction communicate a position. I do clearly distinguish, though, between saying “Black lives matter” and “Hey 12th-graders, I really think you should all vote Libertarian…and in particular, you and the adults in charge of you should vote for _____.” The latter, in my opinion, is the kind of “political speech” that teachers should not engage in, and that was my frame of mind in that post I linked above. The absence of that kind of political statement (“vote for _____”) isn’t even remotely in the same category as the absence of teaching, for example, the real and observable generational economic impacts of the enslavement of Black Americans long after Lincoln’s magic moment, and how current-day economic disparities by racial division can clearly trace their origins to enslavement and Jim Crow.

It would be irresponsible for schools to elevate American history to the idealistic mythos that inevitably remains when we ignore our historic caste system, our racial divisions, and our enslavement, eradication, forced relocation and outright genocide of non-whites and non-Europeans. To choose not to teach this side of history is a political choice. Intentional omission is just that: intentional.

As for “patriotic education” to be promoted by the 1776 Commission? Willfully ignoring uncomfortable history shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for patriotism.