Ending Racism in United States by Teaching Modern History
Virtually every historian would like to have the authority to change school curricula so that we could go forward with Evans’ recommendation for a second year of American history as a required course.
Evans’ concern with widespread ignorance of modern American history is well-founded. Current high school juniors were born during President Nixon’s abbreviated second term and most did not learn to read (or even watch television) until the Carter presidency. Their memories begin, more or less, with the Iranian hostage crisis. They cannot remember Watergate. But our colleagues in literature, natural science, mathematics, computer science, and other fields can argue in similar fashion that the material for them to teach constantly expands. Progress affects every discipline, not just history.
Historians need not admit defeat to the forces of time and resign themselves and their students to never meeting modernity in the study of the past. At Windward School in West Los Angeles, the yearlong American history survey course for juniors begins with the Great Crash of 1929 and continues forward to the election of 1988. While that approach does require some backing and filling, the effect has been to excite students at the outset of the course.
Parents have reported that their children have become more attentive to news reports of national and international developments. In addition to formal oral history assignments, students have gone to their grandparents and older kin with questions about the Depression or World War II. The quality of student questioning about current affairs has taken a rapid jump.
Beginning the course in 1929, then turning to Columbus and his contemporaries in mid-December, does not eliminate the likelihood that some topics will be compressed or skipped. But doing so has energized the study of American history at our school and helped students gain insight into the history we are creating today.
NEIL S. KRAMER
Director of Studies
Windward School
Los Angeles
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