A key component of Middle East Studies methodology is to identify and deconstruct the relationship between knowledge about the region and the power structures that give knowledge meaning (Said 1978). Typically, that methodology is applied to Middle East Studies at the post-secondary level (Lockman 2010, Lockman 2016). This paper applies that methodology to public schools in Washington, D.C. Through discursive analysis, I will tease out the “epistemological commitments” (Abu El Haj 2001) of what the government of Washington, D.C. calls “social studies learning standards” -- short sentences which “detail the knowledge [about the Middle East that] students are expected to acquire at a particular grade level.” (Office of the Superintendent of Education [OSSE] 2011). Based on my experience teaching the Middle East in a Washington, D.C. public high school, I also raise questions about the relationship between the content standards and teachers’ work conditions, and whether such conditions support or inhibit the development of a praxis (Freire 2016) which could deconstruct US colonialism inside American public schools -- in other words, whether the Middle East Studies specialist can do their work inside this system. One goal of this paper is to bring Middle East Studies into conversation with American Studies, broadly defined, and in particular ethnographic studies of DC that consider the colonial relationship between the US Government and Washingtonians (Williams 1988; Price 1998). Highlighting those connections, I argue, productively provincializes the Middle East scholar by drawing attention to colonial dynamics inside the US. I conclude by calling for a deeper engagement with the American public school system by Middle East Studies scholars at both a theoretical and practical level.