So, I won't be teaching in Texas. Far right members of that State's Board of Education won their fight to vastly re-write the history and social studies curriculum- which could potentially have an impact nationwide, as Texas buys a lot of textbooks.
Ick, ick, ick- you can read about what they did here- but this just horrifies me. History is what it is- it's not very pretty and trying to obfuscate that fact does a disservice to students and to the educational system as a whole. When curriculum falls victim to political agendas, be they of the left or the right, educational quality suffers.
But this raises an important point that I've been turning over in my head. How best to teach history? The history of any country isn't pretty- in fact, history itself isn't really all that pretty, but teaching students to differentiate between what a reliable account of history is versus one that isn't is a key component, I would think, to building reliable critical thinkers.
And people don't think enough. People talk past each other and don't bother to listen and extremists on both ends of the spectrum have, well, agendas. Me, I just want to teach some kids something. I could care less about agendas. But surely, by teaching a subject, a certain amount of bias is inevitable?
To me, the problem with the history I learned in high school is that it failed to connect with the modern world in a sane manner. The English Civil War lead to the American Revolution, which lead to the Glorious Revolution, which lead to the French Revolution. The ideas from all of those events are felt in America today. Why we needed to know the history of Europe in super-great detail, when India, China and Latin America are all far more important in the modern world is beyond me?
Making history exciting and interesting for high schoolers is going to be a huge challenge. One that I can't wait to take on! But replacing one bias with another and replacing history with hagiography?
Not a solution I want to be a part of.
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