We Teach Nothing, We Know Nothing - And That Could Cost the United States Everything
By Bryan Preston
Originally Published on PJ Media
A couple of years ago, a retired teacher who stays in close touch with history teachers across Texas told me something disturbing. Like most states, Texas has standardized testing. Unlike most states, Texas requires public school students to study Texas history in the 4th and 7th grades. Texas history is red in tooth and claw and full of big personalities and big ideas. Standardized testing is forcing teachers to drop about half of the second semester of Texas history to focus on U.S. history -- not to deepen students' understanding of American history, but to teach to the standardized tests.
This, according to my friend, shortchanges students from learning about key parts of Texas history. Teaching to the test is shallow. Add in that history teaching is being watered down overall across our public education system, and we have a problem.
That problem was exposed, unintentionally, by an Obama administration official.
Far be it from me to agree with an Obama acolyte, but Ben Rhodes infamously said, "They literally know nothing" about the journalists he manipulated to sell the awful Iran nuclear deal. This, he said, made it easy to sell that deal. He was a liberal, most journalists are default liberal, so they believed whatever he told them. Lack of knowledge makes a whole lot of things easier for crafty people.
He wasn't wrong. And he wasn't just talking about journalists. Most people literally know nothing about history. And along with losing foundations in history, public schools no longer teach rhetoric or critical thinking. So people don't know what they don't know, and don't know what that means.
Cracking foundations
If Americans had solid foundations in our history, things like what's happened to Thomas Jefferson wouldn't happen...
|
No comments:
Post a Comment