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Re: (FWD) NCC Washington Update, Vol 6, #45, December 21, 2000



<snip>

> 3.   Appropriation Update: $50 Million for History Education
>
<snip>

> This news cannot is most joyous indeed!  Now please excuse and permit the
> following observation/rant...
>
> I have just completed a semester of community college-level American
> History 17A, and have never been more concerned -- or shall I say scared
> -- over the lack of basic historical awareness in a classful of young
> adults. OK, I may have been working in the history field for the best part
> of the last 15 - 20 years, but even I knew, 1) that the Pilgrims were all
> Christians [a query asked eight weeks into the semester after covering all
> the European discovery and colonization processes]; what Christians are in
> general (the latter question from a WASPish-looking, native-born young
> man); and how to use an atlas to find state capitals, geographic features
> and regions, which not every classmate knew how to do.
>
> There was also no apparent, cohesive or collective knowledge of the
> differences between the Declaration of Independence (some students were
> still not altogether clear on who George III was and why he was sent the
> declaration..."did they mail it to him?") and the Constitution and Bill of
> Rights.
>
> We lost so much time in review of the basics that our class never made
> serious discussion or coverage of the Civil War, Reconstruction or the
> meaning and importance to the nation of the 1876 Centennial!
>
> I worry that History 17A and B is, in general, improperly planned and
> divided. I seriously wonder whether it might not be best to redesign the
> curricula in thirds: The Age of Discovery; Colonization to the 1820s;
> Industrialization to Reconstruction. Good Lord, my textbook never even
> mentioned the funding or completion of the Pacific Railroad, and still
> made the (smallish) error of calling Fulton's steamboat the Clermont, even
> though he called it the North River Steamboat. In fact, the coverage on
> industrialization and how it affected most of expanding America and
> Manifest Destiny was never addressed in the textbook at all.
>
> I'm not sure $50M will prove to be enough, but it's a significant start in
> the right direction.
>
> Kevin V. Bunker
Student Assistant
CA State Archives

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