What if the US public schools simply dropped the study of US history entirely, as a requirement for graduation?

School, College and Child development
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The controversies of US history are complicated. Do I need to list them or to explain these complexities? There has been an opinion growing in popularity that the United States, as well as much of Western Civilization, is committing suicide by means of poisoning the minds of their youth. From my observations, the US public schools not only assist this poisoning process, but fail entirely to impart even the tiniest smattering of useful knowledge related to the American past to their charges. Public officials will reliably demand that they need more money to do a proper job of indoctrinating the nation’s children. The young minds of our current times are not properly prepared to confront the ugliest truths of American history. Nor are they able to process the greatest achievements, as they’ve little frame of reference to life without the internet, interstate highways, and other common conveniences of modern life. The wisest parents remove their kids from these institutions and use their freedom of choice to educate their kids somewhere else. If kids truly cared about things that happened centuries ago, they’d go online and do some independent research, but at elementary age, they simply aren’t very interested. I’ve been to US history courses at public universities recently. The level of historical study isn’t much more than the public high schools were fifty years ago. If it’s that difficult to teach US history, what would be wrong with dropping it all together? We could go on teaching kids useless trivia about “the evils of America and other Western influences”, or we could use the time more constructively, such as teaching critical thinking skills. I have never submitted a topic question to this esteemed collective of social thinkers, that is, you who have researched Objectivism. You may find some flaws in my assumptions, and I am willing to clarify my views, if necessary. But mainly, I wish to read your responses to my proposal as I believe it should be seriously considered.

All social studies lessons ought to be redressed also. How many votes are necessary to have a bill passed from committee to becoming a law? Really?! I cannot think of a more useless scrap of trivia. In my humble opinion, they’d be better off learning about the basics of logical argument, logical fallacies, how to identify them, and how to make sense of this complicated world.

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The real answer is to get the government out of schools we’re it has no business being involved as it is immoral and illegal for it to be involved there via theft. But, and not that we have time left, also get rid of all “interpretations” of history except for the accurate accounting and actual reasons behind everything. History is a science and must be treated as such. But remember the purpose of education is to teach individuals how to think not what to think and resorting to rationalism without correct, accurate, objectively true context is not the answer. I was in public schools in the 80’s and 90’s and for the most part the history was accurate, but I have no idea what they are teaching now,  but if it’s like what is implied through all the woke nonsense then that needs to be immediately corrected as we can’t create anti-reality citizens and expect anything but all of the destruction of civilization that is currently occurring as a result.

And remember the purpose of accurate history is to avoid repeating the issues and evils of the past. If an accurate history is presented then we wouldn’t be on the path of creating a strange combination of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, a return to pre-Enlightenment Dark Ages and every other evil event and era in history again in modern America as has occurred. The Ominous Parallels should be required reading in about 6th or 7th grade.

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EC, I agree with much of what you’ve said. As for the state of reality as it is, the public schools are not going away anytime soon, and while the lessons taught today may or may not be immoral, they are certainly legal. If they are not, please, explain how the public schools can exist as illegal institutions. If the solution is some sort of private elementary school option, then fine, the problem is settled.

Interpretations of past events are all that one can expect, so I’m not sure as to what you meant by “get rid of all ‘interpretations’ of history…” I thought this topic might be useful as I noticed another recent topic covering “the teaching objective history”. I would argue that history is much less a science, and more of a liberal art. If it were merely scientific, only the fact (volumes and volumes of facts) would be presented, and the little darlings would have to figure out what the point of it all is. As with any narrative the writer usually begins with a point he/she wishes to make, and then sets about to construct the argument to support that point of view with various evidence, and omission of some other relevant context. Like it or not, omissions are going to be unavoidable. The point of the lesson can go either way, that is, pro-nation or “woke”. History lessons were once used to promote national pride, just as lyric and lore was necessary for tribal cohesion among peoples of the past. Today, the “science” of telling the story is never going to satisfy tradition-minded parents nor the extreme post-modernists, and in the end it only confuses the children. So, if we can’t get rid of the schools, could we at least stop confusing the kids with problems they ought to try to solve after they have matured somewhat?

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My understand of what was taught in high school history is over a half century old, so I really have little idea what they teach these days. But not no idea. Given what I have learned about the contemporary situation, I would take seriously a proposal to drop history and all social sciences from the curriculum, but also probably all literature, so now please spell out what the basic curriculum of high school would be, bearing in mind the staggering incompetence that most students have in math and science.

Instead, I suggest that there should be a re-consideration of the purpose of education. There seem to be three main viewpoints on that topic. One is that there are certain data points that are so important that it is impossible to exist as a human without knowing them. I guess “Declaration of Independence was July 4, 1776” would be an example, at least if you are an American. I lived for many decades without knowing when Norwegian Grundlovsdagen is, unlike every Norwegian. So obviously, importance depends on context. As it stands, the best justification offered is the intuition that “that datum is intrinsically important for our culture”.

The second is that education serves as indoctrination for a social agenda, so if the agenda is “pride in American accomplishments” that leads to one curriculum, but if the agenda is “shame in American accomplishments” that leads to a different curriculum. The same holds for scientific subjects, that the agenda should be something like “eco-responsible farming”, “justice-based medicine”. This is the current dominant approach to curriculum development.

The final approach is based on developing skills of reasoning. I have no issue with that approach, the question is how can it possibly be implemented? The main problem with a focus on reason-based education is that ideological indoctrination has hijacked the concept, by replacing actual reason with progressive pseudo-axioms under the umbrella of “critical thinking”. That brand has already been corrupted, I suggest referring to it as “Critical Theory” and put it in opposition to something else like “Reason-Based Education”.

There are three agents for setting curriculum. The first and best-known are the governments, which get to dictate what “counts” in a curriculum (bear in mind that even though the government does not run all education, it does dictate content to some degree for any education that is “accredited”). You can run an after hours counter-culture school that will supplement the government curriculum, that is what Sunday school is about, but it doesn’t “count”. Legislatures are notoriously bad (evil, not inefficient) at figuring out what should be in the curriculum. The second agent is the school bureaucracy, such as the school board or the curriculum committee. This is the weakest link in the chain, since they must follow orders from above but have variable control over the actual agents of education (teachers). Their greatest power is course-material selection, the H-bomb of education. The final agent is the college of education, which teaches future teachers, therefore teaches what and how to teach. This is the most direct and effective way to change the actual curriculum, because it is the teacher that directly imparts something to the student, so to the extent that teachers have some freedom to choose how and what, that is where actual curriculum change is best implemented.

The obvious follow-up question is, what can be done (by whoever) to bring about a change in what teachers do? Somebody has to devise and implement a curriculum for university education classes focusing on that which is most important, that means that somebody has to become a professor of education. Furthermore: there can’t just be a single such somebody, those professors of education have to be widespread in meta-education. The decay of education has been a slow process, largely encouraged by and not distinct from general cultural decay. It has not all been decay, there have been improvements especially a decrease in involuntary tribalism (discrimination based on the un-chosen).

Some parents may remove their children from a particularly offensive school system to protect their child, but the wisest parent leaves their child in school, exposing them to the harsh reality of what life will be like for them, and then supplements the child’s education at home.

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Requirements for what courses must be taken by all students in public school are set by the individual States. To get the federal government involved in such curriculum decisions would be a big legal reform.

Many Americans supplement what they are taught in school history with further readings in history, more socialist or more capitalist, as they like. And many see film or documentaries, such as Ken Burns, beyond what is in approved text books.

Even travel in the country can awaken one to more accurate history. It was from a visit to Charleston, SC, a few years ago, that I finally learned that it was from the charter of the Carolina commercial project (a clause written by John Locke) that some religious toleration began to be instituted in the civil authority in North America (and NOT with the old school-story that it began with the Pilgrims immigrating into MA).

I notice that the US naturalization requirements include:

• Be able to read, write, and speak basic English. • Have a basic understanding of U.S. history and government (civics). • Be a person of good moral character. • Demonstrate an attachment to the principles and ideals of the U.S. Constitution.

The required oath is:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

I’m pretty sure the public education system was failing to turn out such acceptable citizens, native born, even when I was in public schools through high school five decades ago. 

 

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1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

I’m pretty sure the public education system was failing to turn out such acceptable citizens, native born, even when I was in public schools through high school five decades ago.

I don’t think the oath is a useful indicator of education, instead I would look at the citizenship test that immigrants have to pass before taking the oath. I agree that most US-born citizens don’t know the answer to all of these questions (I actually did not remember the answer to question 7). It is important to learn the official answer to question 11, the true answer is “government-regulated economy”. However, 60% is a passing score.

If you read those questions, and their official answers, you begin to see what some of the problems of education are. A huge number of these questions don’t have clear objective answers as in “what is the capitol of Maryland?”.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries