At the Detroit News, here’s an update to yesterday’s story about the Michigan DOE banning the use of the word “America” to describe the United States. The DOE issued a denial, but it turns out there’s more than a little truth to the tale after all: Keep our schools safe for ‘Americans’.

Michigan’s politically correct bureaucrats almost killed the use of “America” in social studies classes. Fortunately, state school Superintendent Mike Flanagan says he is stopping this nonsense. But taxpayers and parents must remain vigilant against this dumbing down of our students.

The problem began 10 years ago. That’s when the Michigan Department of Education eliminated the use of “America” and “Americans” on its Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) social studies testing, according to Karen Todorov, the department’s social studies consultant.

As she has made clear in e-mails and other statements, Todorov says it is “ethnocentric” for educators to refer to Americans when Canadians and residents from Central and South America are also Americans.

Department spokesman Martin Ackley defended the practice Tuesday by saying it was part of a national trend of being “more historically accurate.” He used the hypothetical example of a transfer student from Mexico getting confused if the MEAP test referred to America. …

The issue became even sillier last week when Todorov told a meeting of the Michigan Social Studies Supervisors Association that officials should tell their teachers not to use “America” or “Americans.”

“We use the United States after the founding of the nation, and before that ‘the colonies of North America’ or ‘North Americans,’” she wrote in an e-mail. …

Now that this exercise in political correctness has been exposed, Flanagan properly promises that “America” and “American” won’t be banned. He says Todorov’s statements have been “misconstrued.”

But this, too, is revisionist history — as demonstrated by the department’s initial defense of excluding “America” from the MEAP test and Todorov’s vigorous defense of the philosophy on Frank Beckmann’s WJR radio show.

Flanagan may soft pedal her comments as an innocent “conversation,” but they had the blunt force of the state behind them. That explains why educators we talked to Wednesday were reluctant to go on the record — for fear of angering state officials.

It’s fine that Flanagan has promised that this will stop. But the proof of his convictions will be in his actions, not in his words. His department should restore the use of “America” on the social studies MEAP test. And perhaps he should keep a better eye on what his officials and consultants are up to when they think no one is looking.