California legislators aspire to mandate the teaching of their favorite bits of history.
One bill would require that a landmark 1946 California school desegregation case be added to history lessons.
Another bill seeks to add more information about the role of Filipino Americans who fought in the U.S. Army during World War II.
More information about the contributions of Italian Americans in state and U.S. history is in yet another bill. Other measures would add more information about American Indians, the Vietnam War and the deportation of Mexican citizens during the Depression.
Not a good idea, editorializes Media News.
Bad link?
Seems like a relatively harmless way for the California legislature to spend its time. Most things they do are far more expensive and harmful.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Perhaps we could teach them that legislator’s elevators still have operators just to make sure common folk do not attempt to ride with them, or that Willie Brown got away with crap no white politician would have, just by riding the white guilt horse.
I’m surprised. I would have thought the first history bill that they would have passed is one that outlawed teaching kids any of the details of their own past legislative endeavors.
This link works: http://tinyurl.com/67q2hx
I wonder how many Americans that have gone through the K-12 school system since 1965 have actually read the Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, famous Supreme Court cases, and the rest of U.S. History that used to be standard in high school curriculums.
There’s nothing wrong with learning “the little details” of history - those are often the ones that make it the most interesting - but you have to know history in general first. For example, no matter how much you might wish it were so, Marilyn Monroe’s part in U.S. History will never be as big as Abraham Lincoln’s part in U.S. History…
“I wonder how many Americans that have gone through the K-12 school system since 1965 have actually read the Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, famous Supreme Court cases, and the rest of U.S. History that used to be standard in high school curriculums.”
You have said it all, Wolf.
The plain fact is, US history during the Civil War period (as one example), is no longer about the underlying causes; about Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, or any of their major lieutentants. It is all about Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.
And that’s dangerious, frankly.
To extrapolate: is anyone really surprised that these days, people with any modicum of education and sophistication get their kids into charter schools or private schools?
And do any of you teachers and administrators out there understand that, until you cure at least some of your major problems, those parents with any modicum of education and sophistication will continue to seek other alternatives?
Or will you contine to adhere to the public school union and administration line?
If this makes you angry, consider the outrage of those, like me, in their mid-60s,who have watched, decade by decade, the systematic failure of the public school system in this country.
Bill