Students May be Taught That American History Begins After the Civil War
Imagine studying history starting with Rutherford B. Hayes. In case you don’t remember, his presidency started in 1877. Well, if you were an 11th grader in North Carolina that may be the extent of your education about this country. No founding fathers, no Declaration of Independence, no Constitution, no Revolutionary War, no Civil War and nothing in between. This is not a joke. It seems to be what the state’s top school officials are proposing.
Image via
“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. “What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.” She concluded. “The students are in school for 13 years. They certainly are taught U.S. and North Carolina history in middle school.”
While students may learn something about the nation’s history in the lower grades. The concepts being taught in the later grades are the ones students will carry forward. Not being able to understand the philosophy of our country in its infancy and comparing this to the years that followed and the thinking and economics leading up to the Civil War provides no basis for studying about what happened after this conflict.
A review of the department’s draft of Essential Standards for the course, which is available online, indicates that United States History studies skew to the cultural rather than historic aspect of the subject. There is little time devoted to the two World Wars we fought. Study of the Great Depression focuses on expanding the size and power of (and, therefore, dependence upon) the federal government. The Korean Conflict seems to have been overlooked. The objective of the Vietnam discussion is to analyze the war’s effect at home. The Gulf War and the current conflicts were not included in the syllabus.
However, there is much devoted to the women’s movement (dating back to Susan B. Anthony and on through Gloria Steinem), civil rights, immigration and the rise of labor unions. Also covered is technology and government regulation, economic crises and the need for government regulation as well as the impact non-renewable resources will have in regards to government, business and consumers. Perusing the course standards suggests the emphasis is more about social attitudes and less about civic realities. The subject matter appears to move away from history and some might interpret it to be a subtle means of rewriting it by eliminating those topics the school administrators find objectionable or not conducive to advancing their points of view.
Are similar changes taking place in your local school district? Are your grand children in danger of being taught revisionist and/or incomplete American history? Are pre-boomers going to let agenda-driven educators deprive the next generation of Americans from the full story of this great experiment in freedom known as democracy? No way.
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment