ALBANY, New York (WWNY) – Should New York\u2019s public schools teach lessons on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol? Some state lawmakers say, yes.<\/p>\n
State Senator John Liu and Assemblyman Charles Lavine, who are downstate Democrats, are calling for the passage of their legislation to require New York public schools to teach students about what happened that day.<\/p>\n
(See the legislation here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n If passed, the measure would require schools to educate students \u201con the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath.\u201d<\/p>\n The lesson would be part of the state\u2019s required coursework in civic education and other historical events, such as slavery, the Holocaust, and the mass starvation in Ireland in the 1840s.<\/p>\n On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump, fueled by his claims of a stolen election, assaulted police and smashed their way into the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s victory, forcing lawmakers into hiding.<\/p>\n Approximately 140 law enforcement officers were injured. One rioter was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer.<\/p>\n Congress reconvened hours later to finish certifying the election result.<\/p>\n President Trump has referred to Jan. 6 as a \u201cday of love\u201d and called the rioters \u201cpatriots.\u201d <\/p>\n More than 1,000 people were sent to prison for their roles in the riot. President Trump later pardoned all of them.<\/p>\n \u201cFive years after the Donald Trump-led Capitol insurrection, his administration continues to spin revisionist narratives to gaslight the American people into believing the events of that fateful day were somehow not a violent assault on our democracy. In an age when conspiracy theories are able to inspire and incite such wanton political violence, it is more important than ever that our schools equip the next generation with the truth, free from bias, and without prejudice, in order to protect our democracy,\u201d said Senator Liu in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bill is only necessary due to President Trump\u2019s all-out effort to erase the January 6th insurrection, which he personally led, along with many other inglorious moments in our history, from the memory of time. I sincerely hope that Americans of good faith will challenge the administration\u2019s attempts to move our nation towards an autocracy by attempting to whitewash parts of our history and instead fulfill our nation\u2019s solemn obligation to teach our children the truth. Without it, our struggle to establish a more perfect union and ability to remain, as Lincoln put it, \u2018earth\u2019s last best hope,\u2019 is in mortal peril,\u201d said Assemblyman Lavine.<\/p>\n Copyright 2025 WWNY. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALBANY, New York (WWNY) – Should New York\u2019s public schools teach lessons on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14655,31512,9,11,10,49,51,50,13622,42063,42062,21265],"class_list":{"0":"post-87160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-lawmakers","9":"tag-lesson","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-new-york-state","14":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-state-news","16":"tag-public-school","17":"tag-requirement","18":"tag-riot","19":"tag-u-s-capitol"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}