02/22/24

House File 2544 survived last week’s funnel deadline in the Iowa Legislature. It now awaits consideration in the state House of Representatives. If I were a public school social studies teacher in Iowa and the bill were to become law here, I would begin to figure out how I could continue to teach what I know about American history and government.

H.F. 2544, among other stipulations, sets forth curriculum changes for teaching social studies in Iowa’s public schools. Support for the bill in the House Education Committee came from patriotic legislators who think it’s important that young Iowans learn the history of their country and how it functions under law. I have no doubt of that. I would be disappointed if that were not the case. And I would expect the same from any legislator who votes for the bill if and when it goes to the floor of the House.

That doesn’t change my opinion that the bill can be improved. For one thing, legislators should take note of the sheer volume of original documents that the bill requires students in grades five through twelve to study, and consider how much class time that exercise would consume. There are 13 documents specifically required:

The Mayflower Compact; Common Sense, the essay published by Thomas Paine in 1776; The Declaration of Independence; The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777; The Pennsylvania Act for the Gradual Abolition of  Slavery; The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; The Northwest Ordinance; The U.S. Constitution; The Federalist Papers, including Federalist No. 10 and Federalist No 51; Washington’s Farewell Address; relevant excerpts from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville; a transcript of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate; and The Emancipation Proclamation.

And then, just in case something was overlooked, “The writings of the founding fathers.” Remember, these would be requirements for fifth graders. I would think a more practical approach for the bill generally would be to create recommendations for teachers about curriculum materials rather than requirements.

Another area of concern: the history requirement in the bill includes western civilization only, not world civilization. Especially in the modern era, it is impossible to understand America’s story without at least a rudimentary awareness of non-western traditions.

A third concern: the history requirement is silent about a number of topics that have played a huge role in America’s past, including immigration, labor unions, Jim Crow laws, national parks and conservation, and the role and treatment of native Americans, to name just a few. If I were a history teacher, I would read the bill closely to see if there are specific requirements into which I could shoehorn material about such momentous, but omitted, historical threads. 

Slavery, for instance, could be reviewed under the bill’s requirement for teaching about the Civil War, but “America’s original sin,” as it’s been called, existed here for nearly 250 years prior to the 1860s. It’s not acceptable to omit a requirement about the role played in our history by America’s black slaves, who numbered some four million when the Civil War broke out. Nor could such a requirement be confused with the curriculum-prohibited “critical race theory,” although some conservatives would no doubt try to do so.

Finally, the very last few lines of the bill sort of give the game away. They lay down the bill’s requirements for civics instruction for public high school students in Iowa. The very last phrase of the bill stipulates six U.S. Supreme Court cases that must be taught. Five of them are Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education. 

I can certainly agree that those five cases have had a huge impact on American jurisprudence and America’s way of life, and high school students need to know about them. But then there’s the sixth case requirement: Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining and Milling Company v. Pennsylvania.

Say what? 

I suspect that the Pembina case, decided in 1888, remains a mystery even to most of my attorney and legislative friends.

I tried to research the case, but even then it was difficult to uncover what it meant, let alone why Iowa high school students should have to learn about it. But it finally became clear: the Pembina case appears to be among the first in American history in which a Supreme Court justice declared corporations to be people for purposes of constitutional law. 

That dictum was expressed by Associate Justice Stephen Field in the case, not by the majority of the court. The statement was irrelevant to the actual decision in the case, which instead involved a suit brought by a Colorado mining company against a Pennsylvania law which favored in-state companies over those from other states.

But the Pembina case was not even the first in which the high court declared corporations to be treated like people in terms of the application of the Constitution. That honor goes to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886, with Chief Justice Morrison Waite making the declaration. So why youngsters have to learn about the Pembina case is a puzzler to me.

Over the years, though, the high court gradually embraced and cemented the equation of corporations with actual humans, and today that concept empowers corporations to do all kinds of things once reserved just to individuals, and likewise endows corporations with protections once enjoyed just by actual people. 

No wonder the conservative-dominated Iowa Legislature might want youngsters to place Pembina on a par in importance with decisions about racial equality. I would really like to know what Iowan drafted House File 2544, if indeed