Reading, writing and religion? A Texas curriculum advisory board’s link to faith-based advocacy Reading, writing and religion? A Texas curriculum advisory board’s link to faith-based advocacy

  

Shortly after leaving his position as Housing and Urban Development Secretary with the Trump administration, Ben Carson began working on a supplemental curriculum for elementary school students he called Little Patriots. When the program launched publicly in 2021, he said it was meant to compensate for a lack of emphasis on “the good things of our nation.”

The initial curriculum, comprising short videos and quizzes, contained significant inaccuracies and an undue emphasis on Christianity in U.S. history, including the erroneous assertion that all founding fathers were Christians, according to an American Historical Association historian who reviewed the materials at the request of a reporter at the time.

When asked about a series of errors, such as the incorrect date for the Battle of Bull Run, Little Patriots’s developers made some corrections. However, they staunchly defended the curriculum’s Christian emphasis, saying in a statement “we aim to deliver a program that enables our country’s children to learn about Faith, Liberty, Community and Life and the role these pillars played throughout our nation’s history.”