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The Knox County Schools’ newsletter, Focal Points, came in the mail recently, and I read it cover to cover. There was a report about a partnership with Stanford University along with useful information like the school calendar. But the story that caught my attention was the one about the new math requirements.
Starting this year, all students will be required to take math each of their four years of high school. I applaud the schools’ efforts “to graduate students with as high a degree of math retention and skill as possible.” I understand the importance of math and science in the new global economy.
But these are complicated times. With the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism on everybody’s mind, our relationship with Russia faltering and our economic conflict with China growing, it’s important for students to understand not just where we are as a country but how we got there as well. As we pursue excellence in education, we need to focus not only on math and science but on history as well.
Maybe I feel strongly about it because of something that happened early in my teaching career. I was leading a discussion in an 11th-grade English course when the subject turned to World War II and the Holocaust. “Stuff happens in wars,” one student said.
“Yeah, you can’t blame Hitler,” another chimed in. “I mean, he was just defending his country. Jews just take it personally.
” I was temporarily silenced by my students’ ignorance and then proceeded as calmly as possible. “Germany wasn’t in a military battle with the Jews,” I told them. “Hitler wasn’t defending his country when he killed 6 million Jews.
Germany was at war with Great Britain, the U.S.S.
R. and the United States. But, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get my students to understand the difference between a country defending itself and what happened during the Holocaust.
They knew very little about World War II or why the United States entered the war. That kind of historical illiteracy is unacceptable. With the history curriculum on my mind, I e-mailed my daughter’s history teacher and asked about state and county requirements for history.
She spoke to other history teachers and reported back. “We all agreed,” she began. “There is too much Tennessee history.
” Students “need to focus on national history, not Elvis Presley, and the Grand Ol’ Opry.” She went on to say, “I also have a problem with the fact that College Prep history starts after Reconstruction. There is so much that the students are missing.
I know other states do all of US History. It puts our kids at a disadvantage when they get to college. Plus the State End of Course test is far too easy.
The curriculum doesn’t challenge the students enough and when they take this test that counts for 15% of their grade, it inflates their grades to a ridiculous point.” She concluded by saying, “Sadly, the Holocaust isn’t mentioned specifically but anti-Semitism is. That’s when it’s up to individual teachers to fill in the gaps.
” Those are some pretty big gaps.
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