Brookings state representatives split on 'exceptionalism' legislation

Posted

BROOKINGS — Brookings District 7’s freshmen representatives Roger DeGroot  and Mellissa Heermann had a bit of a baptism by fire Monday last when the House Education Committee took on a bill that is definitely no rubber-stamp issue: the creation of a Center for American Exceptionalism at Black Hills State University.

By a 9-6 vote — with Heerman voting yea  and DeGroot voting nay —  the bill passed out of Education to the Appropriations committee.

“I voted ‘yes’ on the bill in committee, bcause I felt the convrsation was worth considering,” Heerman said in an email to The Brookings Register. “Having a supplemental option for schools, such as the ‘We the People’ program, which would focus on civil discourse and civics, would not be a wasted effort.

“While there are traditional channels for education curriculum to go through, it is unclear if this topic would end up on the top of the list of needs for educational programming..”

 “I think the bill is unnecessary,” DeGroot, a retired educator who has been a teacher, principal and school superintendent, said in a conversation with The Brookings Register. “Because there is a mechanism in place to develop curriculum. … We have the Board of Education, the Board of Regents, all those folks ready to develop their programs.”

The congressman said that after hearing comments from a variety of people with ties to education at all levels, he thought “their testimony was compelling enough for the bill to be defeated.” A few educators did weigh in with favorable comments.

“I talked to a high school teacher from Brookings who was out here,”  DeGroot said. “She said we already have that program in Brookings: the ‘We The People’ program. The school has the right to do it right now.”

The startup cost of the program — $150,000 — also got his attention: “For two FTEs just to get it going, two FTEs (full-time personnel). If you’re going to run a program like this, it’s going to be quite expensive: to develop it, to sell it, to move it out.”

The proposed Center for American Exceptionalism would be located at Black Hills State University. The bill’s mission would have the center: “ … make the state’s public universities … relevant partners in civics and social studies in education by”: developing a K-12 curriculum balancing “critical thinking with love of country.”

A salient point of the bill reads: “The curriculum shall include a South Dakota history and American Indians component focusing on the proud history of the indigenous peoples of South Dakota.”

The model for such a center, and one favored by Gov. Kristi Noem, would be like that  of Hillsdale College, a private, conservative Christian institution in Michigan that bills itself in its mission statement as: “ … an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women ‘grateful to God for inestimable blessings’ resulting from civil and religious liberty and ‘believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.’”

SDSU emeritus profs weigh in

Brookings resident Delmer Lownowski, South Dakota State University professor emeritus of political science who taught there from 1991 to 2013 queried: “What the Legislature is trying to do, I don’t know how they can identify things that people need to know: whether what’s coming out of Black Hills State University or the social studies thing that they’re working on. I think the best approach to this is to let each teacher do (their) own thing. In the course of their education the students will get both sides of the view.”

Lownowski admitted that he was “really surprised” that the proposal for such a center would be coming out of BHSU: “This is something that most academics would be opposed to. It infringes on their academic freedom.”

“Use of the language  ‘American exceptionalism’ in today’s political arena has some obvious partisan overtunes to it and it has been captured by the American right,” explained Robert Burns, SDSU distinguished professor emeritus of political science and dean emeritus of the Honors College. “It’s intended to advance the idea that the United States is not only exceptional, but it’s superior to other nations.”

He added that earlier in history, “American exceptionalism really meant more than anything that the U.S. was the exception to the rule rather than superior to all (other nations) … with our new experiment with democracy.”

Additionally, the United States was “peculiar to the rule with our framework of government, our unique form of federalism, with its unique for of separation of powers, checks and balances,” Burns added.

He cited also our nation’s “exception to the rule with the type of economy that we were experimenting with — that continued to rely heavily upon slavery as the foundation of that economy.”

He called the language tied to the issue “highly charged.” And while he “would not oppose the idea of the institute,” Burns thinks that “the labeling of the institute includes some very highly charged partisan language in today’s political arena.

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.