Trump’s 1776 Commission to promote ‘patriotic education’

In a move aimed at pleasing his conservative voter base less than two months before the November 3 election, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to set up a “national commission to promote patriotic education” in the US.

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Key-Points

The 1776 Commission is an education commission proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump to support “patriotic education”.

The initiative is an apparent counter to The 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of essays on African American history of the past four centuries, which explores the Black community’s contribution in nation-building since the era of slavery to modern times.

Trump announced the move at a history conference celebrating the 233rd anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution (on September 17, 1787); the document being written in the decade after the original 13 colonies declared independence from the British Empire in 1776.

Trump said students in US universities are ‘inundated with critical race theory, a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation’, and the new project would teach the youth to ‘love America.’