We Need More History Education in Grades K-12

This is another idea debate Democrats should win in a landslide.

With MAGA -Trumpist Republicans behaving like Stalinists and Pro-Segregationist Reactionaries in their continual war on the non-white and non-heterosexual past, Democrats should continue to expose these groups for what they are: agents of ignorance and disinformation or as Richard Shenkman once wrote, the "Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History."

He also wrote other recommended works like I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not, Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of World History, and Just How Stupid Are We.

With other highly regarded books like Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen and Don't Know Much series by Kenneth Davis, Democrats should chastize Know Nothing Republicans daily for the decades-long war on the past from their whitewashing of major historical events, near omission of other cultures contribution to civilization, treating history as the ugly stepchild of the core subjects in K-12 curricula, the attack on the Advanced Placement History program for telling children too much, the dumbing down of textbooks and critical thinking assignments like banning works of literature, and the recent color blind approach of history's most noted episodes like not mentioning Rosa Parks is Black (at least they left the picture) in a recent proposed Florida text.

The solution to this is simple.

More history education is needed in public education and not just in high school.  A year's worth of history is needed at all grade levels of education, including the Elementary ones.

Furthermore, history teachers should have a solid background in the subject they are teaching. If a secondary social studies instructor is teaching United States History, they should have at least 30 to 40 hours in that area and that should include coursework in Indian, Canadian, and Central/South American studies. If it is World History, it should be the same amount of hours and not just European/Western Civilization. The instructor should have a working knowledge of Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Civilizations as well. If that takes more than 40 hours of credits, so be it.

Elementary school teachers should be required to have a knowledge of basic historical literacy as well before they teach.

Students should also be exposed to a year-long American and World Geography Course to go along with the already required Government/Economics annual block.

These are not new solutions to old problems. They have been proposed for decades. I would highly recommend the Paul Gagnon edited Historical Literacy: The Case for History in American Education. It is timeless and could be customized to contemporary times.

Historical Illiteracy is a danger to American Democracy and a license for avaricious plutocrats to take advantage of middle and working-class generations.

The people need to beat the MAGA-Trumpist-White Nationalist Reactionaries in the War on History.

Make History a requirement for all children in all grades in grades K-12.

Defeat the forces of ignorance and disinformation.

Score a victory for enlightenment, historical literacy, and Democracy.

Editorial Poster

 

Editorial Cartoons for the Week from Blog for Arizona

 

Brooks and Capehart from March 24, 2023

 

Play It Again Traitor Party: Revelations that the Reagan Campaign Worked to Keep the Hostages in Iran in 1980 to make Carter look Bad

Photo from New York Times.

We have seen this play out before in history.

In 1968, campaign operatives associated with the Nixon Campaign were known (in real time behind the political drapes) to have gone behind the Johnson/Humphrey Administration back, reaching out to the South Vietnamese Government and telling them they would get a better deal after the elections with a Nixon/Agnew Administration rather than a Humphrey/Muskie one.

That President Johnson, who did not have one hundred percent proof of Nixon's personal involvement at the time, did not publicly broadcast this treason is one of history's great what-ifs.

That nothing happened to the surviving participants after it was eventually made public (including the disgraced Nixon) is a sad commentary on our supposed equal justice system.

Unfortunately, Republicans may have been allowed to play the treason game again in 1980 to the detriment of the over 50 American Embassy hostages being held for months in Iran when reportedly soon-to-be Central Intelligence Director William Casey and former Democratic Texas Governor, turned Republican Secretary of the Treasury and Presidential Candidate John Connally reached out to Middle East contacts in 1980, asking them to ask the Iranians to hold the Americans (denying the Jimmy Carter Administration an October Surprise Foreign Policy victory) until after Reagan won and was inaugurated in 1981.

Like what happened in 1968, it did not take long for the political rumor mill and reporting to emerge of the overtures and possible secret deal to the Iranians from Reagan Campaign Operatives journeying overseas to meet middleman intermediaries to make it happen.

Again, after some investigations, nothing happened to the alleged perpetrators and the people involved in this alleged treasonous activity were allowed to live everyday lives.

Now, with President Carter in Hospice Care, one of the alleged participants in the 1980 deal with the Iranians, former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, out of a too little too late sense of remorse, told reporters at the New York Times that he, along with Governor Connally went to the Middle East that year and, according to Barnes, the former Democrat (who was shot in the same limousine as Kennedy on November 22, 1963) made overtures to these nations to ask the Iranians to hold on to the hostages. According to Barnes who told reporters "History needs to know that this happened," Connally then reported his conversations to Casey.

Whether the Iranians acted on these overtures is anyone's guess. It is a fact that the hostages were not released until the opening moments of the Reagan Administration.

That said, what truly matters is that some operatives in the Reagan Campaign apparently made the effort to reach out to the enemy Iranians for nefarious reasons, circumvent the current government of the United States, and risk the health and safety of over 50 innocent Americans.

The last time I looked, these actions, like the efforts of the Nixon Campaign in 1968, could be constituted as treason.

It can also be considered treason when Donald Trump apparently worked with the Russians to dig up false dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

It was also potential treason when Mitch McConnell refused to go along with the Obama Administration in condemning Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Why President Obama did not call out McConnell over that is a mystery.

It is time for voters to figure out that there is a traitorous-Machiavellian-power hungry-plutocratic wing of the Republican Party just as loathsome as the MAGA wing that will resort to treasonable activity in order to prevail in political contests.

That wing, like its MAGA cousins, can not be allowed to gain power again because it is not America's interests they fight for. It is their own.

 

 

Editorial Cartoons for the Week from Blog for Arizona