Facts Matter and the need to bolster Humanities Education

Very interesting article from Conservative Radio Talk Show Host Charlie Sykes in today's New York Times (link below) on how Trump supporters, after years of conditioning, have become trained to ignore truth and facts even when it is blatantly obvious. As Americans, this is very dangerous because a well-informed public is what drives our successful Democratic Republic. Without it, we open ourselves up to manipulation to a series of demagogues and plutocrats who view us as sheep and steer society to fit their own schemes.

As an educator, there is no arguing that a strong background in Math, English and the Sciences is essential to our future. But the other Humanities (History, Geography,  Civics, Economics, Foreign Languages and the Arts) serve to make us well rounded informed citizens.

Ignorance of the Humanities has been a time-honored method of certain elite circles for generations. Totalitarian Leaders routinely erased enemies of the state from the history books. Japanese Governments have failed to reconcile wartime atrocities in World War Two. There are still elements of German and Turkish society that deny (or would like others to forget) the Holocaust or Armenian Genocide.  Elements of American society would like to downplay narratives like the treatment of Native Americans throughout history or more recently, covert operations from the C.I.A. in places like Italy, Guatemala, and Iran.

It is no accident that in education committees across the country, the two subjects that arouse the most scrutiny are Science and History. The former is because of its examination of life's origins and evolution. The later is because of which narrative of the human condition do we want our children to learn and come away with. Humanities subjects like History have routinely been subordinated to the other core subjects, first by routinely giving the subject to coaches so they can have a full-time job and second trying to get all of histories events crammed into a single year course (one for World which encompasses the age of the planet and one for American which deals with this hemisphere from the time the first Natives arrived.

History standards are continuously ridiculed for being even-handed like the National Standards that were published in the 1990's or the recent controversy surrounding the College Board Standards for American (United States for the confused) History where certain elements of our country roared that we were giving too negative a picture of how our country developed.

FACTS MATTER and People need to be given a thorough grounding in history. This will take more than a year for each survey course and will involve more than just memorizing for a multiple choice test. The more recent standards movement has incorporated the utilization of document based questions and other critical thinking assignments but that is mainly applied to the Language Arts. What is needed is a more integrated Humanities Program where students are taught the tools that will hopefully give them an appreciation of history and make them well informed so the prospects of future demagogues and plutocrats having strangleholds on power are reduced.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/why-nobody-cares-the-president-is-lying.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur