Teaching a more balanced view of history is no crime

When people start bloviating canards against the teaching of critical race theory, that is usually a telltale sign that they have no idea what they are talking about. John Egan of Hunt Valley wants teachers to be unbiased in their teaching of Black history (“What history is being taught in schools?” June 29). That might sound reasonable, but how does that correct the imbalance I experienced as a public school and private college student in the 1960s and 1970s?

My entire academic experience occurred in Maryland. I graduated from public high school in Baltimore County and later got a degree cum laude at Western Maryland College in 1975. My major was history. At no time in elementary school, high school or college was I ever taught about Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, both Maryland natives. The first time I had any inkling of the historical importance of the former was reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s “Black Profiles in Courage” in a Cumberland book shop in the 1990s. About the same time, I grasped the historical significance of Frederick Douglass when I bought a house on the street where he learned to read, which changed the course of history.

The accomplishments of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass represent humanity at its best, but I don’t know how you teach about their accomplishments without portraying the diabolical grip of slavery that they had to risk everything to circumvent. I strongly suspect my experience of being taught no Black history whatsoever was not unique. So how do these zealots against critical race theory propose to correct that sort of imbalance?

Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore