The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol would be required instruction in New York public and private schools, under proposed state legislation.
The measures, pending in the state Senate and Assembly, would require the violent siege five years ago to be added to a short, pre-existing list of topics — including slavery, the Holocaust and mass starvation in Ireland in the 1800s — that are required learning for New York students.
“In state education law we try not to prescribe what the curriculum or syllabus has to be, but there are a small number of events of such historical importance that we feel it necessary to ensure that all public school kids in New York are taught about these events,” state Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who introduced the bill in the Senate, told Gothamist.
Some 140 law enforcement officers were injured and five people died during or shortly after the hours-long attack, when supporters of President Donald Trump breached the Capitol building in a bid to prevent certification of the results of the 2020 election, which Democrat Joe Biden won.
Trump, in one of the first official acts of his second term, granted clemency to all of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the insurrection, with most receiving pardons and others sentence commutations. In a statement, Trump said the pardons sought to address “a grave national injustice” and advance “reconciliation.”
The bill’s sponsors said the president’s rhetoric and actions regarding the attack have made it even more essential for educators to teach the history of that day.
“This bill is only necessary due to President Trump’s all-out effort to erase the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he personally led, along with many other inglorious moments in our history, from the memory of time,” Assemblymember Charles Lavine, a North Shore Democrat, who introduced the legislation in the Assembly, said in a statement.
Liu said Trump has been on a campaign to “gaslight the American people” that Jan. 6 was not a “violent assault on democracy.”
If passed, the requirement would apply to the state’s public and private schools, with lessons to take place at some point in children’s schooling after age 8.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
David Laska, communications director for New York’s Republican Party, brushed off the legislation.
“The American people rejected Democrats’ hysterics over Jan. 6 when they overwhelmingly sent President Trump back to the White House last year,” he said in an email. “This is another in a long line of distractions from Albany Democrats’ affordability and illegal migrant crises.”
