It’s not lying when you just overlook the truth, right?

That’s what some powerful conservatives from South Carolina to Colorado believe. Districts like Denver’s Jefferson County district have been criticizing new AP U.S. History course framework put out by the College Board that for painting America in too honest a light and containing anti-American biases.

Lying by omission is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as lying by omission. It’s like running without moving, which is exactly what districts like JeffCo are warming up to do.

Back in August, the Republican National Committee condemned the new framework for reflecting what they considered to be a “radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.”

At issue is a new approach to AP History this year that focuses more on examining historical documents and discussing the nation’s history, rather than memorizing facts.

According to the Associated Press, board members of the JeffCo district proposed teaching, instead of what the College Board would be testing on AP tests, materials that would “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system.”

Their new content would avoid lessons that condone “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law” – clearly things America wasn’t founded on, right?

These proposals have caused the College Board to come out in support of all of the students and parents who have been protesting their districts’ new policies, representatives stating the students recognize that “social order can – and sometimes must – be disrupted in the pursuit of liberty and justice.”

They’ve come out, too, with statements insisting if a district censors essential concepts from an AP course, that course can no longer bear the “AP” distinction.

There’s a reason the College Board puts out the bulk of our standardized testing and coursework – there’s public trust in the organization to provide students with non-partisan, non-directive content, leaving it up to the district and state the perspective from which they want to teach students.

The framework’s designed to give teachers the freedom to choose how best to teach the content in depth.

It’s unfounded to say, then, that the College Board is the one censoring information if that sort of freedom is encouraged by the Board, and it’s baseless to suggest students will lose their sense of patriotism and unconditional positive regard for America because the course now focuses more on the period before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and slavery and women’s roles than on the battles of the Revolutionary War.

It’s like running without moving – you can’t expect any kind of progress in the future if students aren’t taught what not to do, what hasn’t worked in the past.