For decades, schoolchildren across America have taken field trips to presidential homes such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier. Students and adults alike have learned about the lives and legacies of the men who crafted our founding documents and stood for freedom at the risk of their own lives.
But today, visitors to Monticello and Montpelier will discover that a new narrative has seeped into the grounds of these historic sites in Virginia.
Although Mount Vernon remains the “gold standard” for educational accuracy, Monticello and Montpelier “fall short, as they devote little time to Jefferson’s and Madison’s achievements,” according to Brenda Hafera, a senior policy analyst and deputy director of The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
Both Monticello and Montpelier have adopted woke ideology, focusing on the Founding Fathers’ ownership of slaves and other shortcomings, Hafera says, “without also providing an adequate account of their contributions.”
Hafera, author of a new Heritage report on the three presidential homes, joins the “Problematic Women” podcast to discuss the importance of recognizing and celebrating all that the Founders did, while not ignoring their shortcomings.
* Article from: The Daily Signal