WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Education is urging schools nationwide to strengthen instruction on communism and its historical consequences ahead of the Nov. 7 National Day for the Victims of Communism, while stopping short of requiring schools to adopt specific curricula.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued the request in a Dear Colleague Letter to education leaders and teachers, positioning the guidance as an effort to expand students’ exposure to the history of communist governments and contrast those systems with U.S. constitutional principles.
The department does not mandate or endorse a particular curriculum under the initiative. Instead, the letter points educators toward state approaches already incorporating the subject into public-school instruction.
Arkansas and Arizona require instruction addressing communism and totalitarianism alongside lessons on U.S. founding principles, according to the department. Florida requires age-appropriate instruction on communism and annual instruction tied to Victims of Communism Day.
Tennessee incorporates the observance and the history of communism into its educational standards, while Texas includes instruction on communist governments, their actions and survivor accounts.
McMahon framed the initiative around concern about attitudes toward socialism among younger Americans and argued that schools should give students greater historical context about governments that operated under communist systems.
“At a time when young Americans are expressing positive impressions of socialism in record numbers, it is more important than ever for students to learn and understand the devastating human consequences of communist and socialist regimes,” McMahon said.
The department cited the Ukrainian Holodomor, China’s Great Leap Forward, Cambodia’s Killing Fields and the Soviet gulag system among the historical episodes it wants educators to address. Its broader assertions linking those events to socialism reflect the administration’s framing in the guidance.
The initiative is advisory rather than a new federal curriculum requirement, leaving decisions about instructional standards and classroom implementation with states and local education authorities.
The department described the Nov. 7 observance as the 10th U.S. National Day for the Victims of Communism. The date coincides with the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which established the first communist government in Russia.
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