Posted on 09/16/2009 5:15:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, American history is an irreversible force, ever-progressing and changing the course of human history. Within the past five years alone, America established the first modern democratic state in the Middle East and elected the first African-American president in history. Yet, as students made their way back into America’s classrooms this fall, studies show that our children are less interested in history than ever before.
In 2005, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough testified before the U.S. Senate that American history was the nation’s worst subject. Two years later, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the “Nation’s Report Card”) confirmed McCullough’s findings.
And recently, Diane Ravitch of New York University said, “Every national assessment has shown that students don’t know history … scores for U.S. history are consistently the lowest of any subject tested; typically more than half of high school seniors score ‘below basic,’ the lowest possible rating. In no other subject do a majority of students register so little knowledge of a subject taught in school.”
It is a sad and telling diagnosis of America’s conscience. How can we expect the next generation of Americans to protect and defend the country’s legacy if they do not know their own history? Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote, “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” Our country’s very freedom and future hinges on education. How can we ask our children to fight, and perhaps die, for a country they do not know?
America’s love for history has always been self-propelled. Long before the ivory towers of pedagogy there were the log cabins of self-education. Men like Abraham Lincoln were voracious readers, often going to great lengths to get their hands on, and minds around, the classics. Education wasn’t limited to five days a week, seven hours a day and nine months out of the year; it was an on-going process with children often spending their few spare hours of the day reading under candlelight.
Today, our textbooks are more intent on political correctness, dulled-down event reporting and universal appeal. The dramatic and realistic story of America is mostly absent in the study of American history. Text authors, publishers and higher education experts have desiccated the rich drama and conflicts of history and replaced them with dry narratives that read more like recipe books and less like thrilling, page-turning novels.
My goal, along with a group of award-winning teachers, is to reverse this precarious trend and reshape the future of history education in America. Known as Team HOPE (History Opens Eyes), we have begun incorporating “America: The Last Best Hope” and other curriculum materials into a comprehensive and compelling narrative about our country. “Last Best Hope” does not look or read like any other textbook. It is the story of a people inextricably linked by the common threads of freedom and virtue, a story of men and women who rallied a great people behind them throughout the course of our nation’s history. In “Last Best Hope,” history is more than rote memorization or tedious facts; it is drama, romance, comedy, mystery, action, tragedy and triumph. I believe in the “warts and all” version of American history—not “warts, and that’s all.” And because of this, our project has been positively reviewed by scholars from all ideological perspectives.
This revolution we are commencing is not limited to classrooms or textbooks. Remember parents: You are a child’s first and most important teacher and the single-most effective Department of Education. President Ronald Reagan said, “Let me offer lesson No. 1 about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” As our children return to school this fall, let us actively engage and encourage their interest in history—from the dinner tables to the classrooms.
If we are to restore America’s love for its rich and great history, we must begin by telling the truth, not in a prosaic, tiresome fashion, but in a captivating and memorable way. Our story is one of great suffering and great triumph; it is what Abraham Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”
As we prepare for the new school year, let us remind our children of America’s true greatness, and in so doing, let us give them a true love story.
Our country’s very freedom and future hinges on education.
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Exactly! This is why Bill Ayers and his Marxist ilk concentrate so heavily on the education of children.
Marxism is our nation’s most serious threat. Schools are the Marxists’ most powerful weapon.
Yet...Few conservatives can see past the legislative issue of the day and even recognize that our enemy is communism. That is the philosophy that drives it all. And...Even fewer conservatives recognize that their neighborhood school is freedom’s death knell. Few conservatives bother to even remove their own child from the government schools and could care even less about our nation’s children as a whole.
I am exasperated and in despair.
As we prepare for the new school year, let us remind our children of America’s true greatness, and in so doing, let us give them a true love story.
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Bill doesn’t get it, and/or he is not courageous enough.
If he “got it”, he would urgently and courageously call for parents to remove their children from the government schools and work for the complete shut down of the Marxist dominated system.
Another question is: Whose history do we study and celebrate? With the diversity scam of the last 30 years now fully entrenched and our schools increasingly filled with students of a non-western background (and I include Mexican students in this group), it's going to take a lot of spine to indoctrinate students with a history that does not include their ancestors. Or worse, a history that exposes their ancestors in a less than flattering light.
My personal example is trying to teach the story of the Alamo to hispanic and Mexican students; an older fellow teacher advised to present the material in a non-judgemental way that told both sides of the story. I was appalled at that, as I saw it as a vehicle to induce patriotism.
Bill is essentially handing the American people a bandaid and telling them to put on our gushing Marxist hemorrhage ( misnamed “public” schools).
The man is either clueless and/or lacks the courage to call the problem what it is, and offer the only possible solution possible. Get your kids out of these anti-American snake pits! And...conservatives must work to provide a conservative private and tuition-free alternative to all children.
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