My wife teaches high school in a suburb of Washington D.C. and she tells me that the students have no idea even who Franklin Roosevelt was, much less any of the founding fathers. On the other hand, they are bombarded with lessons about Rosa Parks, gay rights and etc.
As time in my teaching career passed, I found it harder and then impossible to find texts that covered the first half of the 20th century adequately. It takes time to cover the Great Depression and the New Deal and the newer texts just don’t do them justice. Besides, the joy of making the kids learn about the “alphabet-soup” agencies and outfits like the Southen Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) made it a good lesson to teach. I found my lesson on the TVA (”a giant dam project, that hired a lot of dam workers, that used a lot of dam-building materials, that resulted in a lot of cheap dam electricity, etc., etc.) was a favorite with my students.
World War II in my latest text had one five-page lesson on the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Japan, invasion of Poland, France, Battle of Britain, and Pearl Harbor—really? As much space was devoted to the “home front” which was really about women in the factories, the plight of black workers, Mexicans being deported, and of course, the detention of the Japanese-Americans. No mention of the fate of the Marines at Wake. Guadalcanal might have gotten a sentence, Midway, a couple.
Part of this is, I know, is the passage of time. Those who lived through those times are leaving us—but the key events that shaped the 20th century, as well as our own times deserve space, time and thought—even on the part of 8th graders.