Just about every adult in America who attended a public school has passed through a history class, and maybe they had an aptitude for the subject, had a teacher who inspired them to dig deeper, or were turned off completely by a clock-punching instructor who offered little more than a dry recitation of dates and names.

Over the last couple of years, history classes in middle schools and high schools have become yet another battlefield in America’s ongoing culture wars. Some parents and activists have argued that they are hotbeds of indoctrination that drive students to loathe their country; specifically, more than 30 states have put new laws on the books that place strict parameters on how the United States’ legacies of slavery and Jim Crow racism can be taught.

Amid the hubbub, the American Historical Association decided to actually see what conditions were like on the ground, surveying more than 200 teachers and administrators on how they teach history and the challenges they encounter.

The report found that rather than darkly scheming to turn their charges into Marxists or some such thing, educators in history classrooms have as their first priority making students aware of the country’s complex history and preparing them to be engaged in their communities when they graduate. Teachers mostly use materials from nonpartisan sources, such as the Library of Congress and try to keep their own views out of the classroom.

A summary of the report, which was released this month, states that the furor over history instruction “has generated outrage, wild claims and a growing sense of alarm in homes and communities across the country.”

It also dismissed much of the sound and fury over history classes, characterizing it as “political theater,” and added, “overheated rhetoric threatens the professional integrity of teachers and exacerbates partisan polarization.”

Teachers surveyed for the course said students in their classes absolutely should think about the history attached to slavery and Jim Crow, which is obvious and makes absolute sense. The fact that human beings were once owned and viciously exploited for their labor is just that, a fact. It does a disservice to students to sweep that history under the rug. The same goes for Jim Crow laws, which deprived too many citizens of their basic rights for too many decades.

Nicholas Kryczka, the report’s research coordinator, told Education Week, “People should not be panicky about the state of the American curriculum. … Most of the curriculum in the United States that is typically used by most teachers is perfectly defensible against charges of either liberal indoctrination or conservative chauvinism.”

What problems do America’s history teachers themselves see in their profession? A dearth of resources and instructional time and a lack of professional respect. These are things that all educators should be accorded.

STEM classes get a lot of attention from educators and administrators, but it remains critical for young people to learn about our history. They will be determining our country’s direction in a generation or two, and before they can do that they need to understand where we’ve been.