Trump in the classroom: how history teachers in 2051 will discuss the 45th president and his legacy
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After four years of divisive policies, outrageous tweets and two impeachments, Donald Trump will leave office today as officially the worst US president.
His approval rating of just 41 per cent is lower than any president since polling began in 1938. In fact, he is the first president never to get above 50 per cent approval at any time. So, what will the history books of the future say about him?
Here, Kritian Shanks, head of history at Sherburn High School in North Yorkshire takes a look at how Trump may be taught in the classroom…
Five years
Although A-level politics students are already grappling with the subject of Trump’s presidency (and I don’t envy their teachers having to plan lessons about a man who constantly changes the rules), it’s possibly too soon to be teaching the post-Trump era in the history curriculum by 2026.
How the 45th President of the United States will be defined in history really depends on what happens over the next few months. Who knows what skeletons will come tumbling out of the White House closets and what the investigations will reveal into the storming of the Capitol on January 6th?
Although the second impeachment is huge news now, it’s an arcane concept for children to get their heads around. Unless we have a picture of Trump wearing an orange boiler suit in jail, they’re unlikely to engage with the subject. But it would be fascinating to ask students how a reality TV star and businessman went from being elected to President to being imprisoned five or eight years later.
One certainty is that by 2026, the Republican Party will still be strongly influenced by his legacy. A large majority of Republicans think the election was unfair and they’re not going away quietly. In five years, it's hard to believe we’ll see President Kamala Harris. In fact, we may well have President Hawley or Cruz or Trump’s daughter Ivanka may even run for office. There’s even the remote possibility that Trump himself may be serving a second term as President of the United States.
Whatever happens, he will probably be remembered by most people as the worst president of all time. The scandals of other impeached Presidents - Nixon, Johnson and to a lesser extent Clinton - seem mild in comparison. The problem for history teachers will be cutting through Trump’s ‘showbiz’ personality – his bizarre tweets and speeches – to look at why a nation elected him in the first place, what his policies were and what went so badly wrong.
At first, it will be incredibly hard to teach anything about him without resorting to the comical element of his time in office. Students will have to look up his ranting tweets as source materials! But serious subjects close to children’s hearts – climate change, Black Lives Matter – will be experiencing the ripple effects of his presidency so Trumpism is something we are going to discuss with pupils, even if we’re not teaching it.
Ten years
By 2031, history teachers may well be looking at the wider picture about what has happened to America in the post-Trump era and whether it is possible to unite the United States after a long period of division.
If he ends up disgraced, we’ll probably see him as marking the end point of a period which included Reagan, the Republican Revolution against Clinton and the launch of the Tea Party. But we may also be looking at America as a country even more bitterly divided and with an election system that is broken because no one believes in it anymore.
When it comes to mistrust of the media and ‘fake news’, helping young people to understand the difference between fact and opinions and how to evaluate sources is going to become even more important post-Trump.
Thirty years
By 2051, we’ll be looking back with a more objective eye to the much bigger story of Trump. When I’m teaching children about grim subjects such as the First World War or the Nazis, they’re amazed that ordinary people couldn’t see what was unfolding right in front of their eyes. But when you’re living in a moment of history – as we are now with not only Trump but the pandemic – it’s easy to become desensitised. Time gives us a chance to process grief and shock and no doubt we’ll be looking carefully at his bungled response to COVID or the decisions he took over climate change.
As more evidence comes out about what happened – particularly on January 6th – I’m convinced Trump’s reputation will be considered more villainous as time goes by. His divisiveness has coincided with the devastation of a global pandemic with tragic, terrifying results. But I’m hopeful that by placing our futures in the hands of our best and brightest people, we still have reason to feel optimistic.
As a teacher, my aim has always been to show youngsters that the future is bright and people can learn from their mistakes. That’s been a challenge when they have asked me questions in recent times. But I hope that in three decades, we can look back on this period to show how America survived and healed and it wasn’t a harbinger of darker times to come.
