Thursday, September 25, 2014

Changing History

This story came across the news this morning:

http://time.com/3428238/denver-students-history-curriculum-respect-for-authority-jefferson-county-school-board/

The school board proposed editing history texts to only highlight the positive aspects of American history and eliminate "social strife".  Frankly I'm speechless.  Is it fair for me to say that one simply cannot pick and choose which pieces of history to teach?  How can we develop an understanding of how we got to where we are now (for better or worse) if we omit fundamental elements?  History is not a string of unrelated occurrences.  It is an interconnected web - things don't just happen.  And throughout history that social strife, civil disobedience, and outright aggression has, ultimately, affected the greatest changes.  I would also encourage you to check out the Twitter feed.  Some of those are hilarious.  

*I'm choosing to move past the clear connection to all the historical examples of the government trying to alter history.  It's certainly not a new phenomenon so hopefully we just won't have to teach that to kids and no one will be the wiser....

No comments:

Post a Comment