SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (NewsNation Now) — South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem announced she is the first candidate nationally to sign “The 1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools.”
Noem made the announcement on Twitter Monday while stating that schools are teaching students to “hate their own country and pitting them against one another on the basis of race or sex.”
The pledge is on a website created by a group that supports former President Donald Trump’s education vision. Before leaving office, Trump established a “1776 Commission” that issued a report meant to counter “The 1619 Project” — a widely read and debated work of journalism by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
The pledge Noem signed includes goals that “restore honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country” and “prevent schools from politicizing education by prohibiting any curriculum that requires students to protest and lobby during or after school.”
The 1619 Project marked the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans being brought to the United States and the long-term consequences of slavery and contributions of Black Americans. While many praised it as a needed reassessment of American history, some scholars disputed it as excessively harsh in places.
Trump’s 1776 Commission was a call to support “patriotic education.” The American Historical Association denounced the 1776 report as hasty, simplistic and reliant at times on “falsehoods, inaccuracies, omissions, and misleading statements.” President Joe Biden revoked the report on his first day in office.
Noem said the online initiative is in partnership with Ben Carson — together they submitted an op-ed to Fox News advocating for the pledge.
“The creation of President Trump’s Advisory 1776 Commission offered real promise, as it sought a return to a truthful, patriotic education worthy of an exceptional nation,” stated the op-ed citing that students are taught the nation’s founders “were altogether sinful men unworthy of statues or even praise” and “students are being subjected to the radical concept known as critical race theory.”
“And we’re hoping that we continue to build momentum and get more and more people that are in leadership offices who want to make sure our kids are learning the real facts around our history,” Noem and Carson said in their joint op-ed.
The Associated Press and NewsNation affiliate KELO contributed to this report.