The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.
- Robert E. Lee
Can you imagine living in a world without borders, fences, walls, dividers or lines. There is no here or there; everything is relative. This is essentially the kind of world we hand our kids when we don’t teach them our nations history…all of it.
Some officials in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction evidently don’t have a problem with such a world. They are debating changing their curriculum so that the study of U.S. History will begin at 1877. If these officials have their way, North Carolina high schools students will not learn of our pilgrim forefathers, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American revolution, the development of the Constitution, the wisdom of our founders, or the War Between the States. Can an American who has no knowledge of such basic events and ideas truly be considered educated?
It is also somewhat odd when these educational bureaucrats decided to begin their new curriculum. 1877 marks the beginning of the progressive era of United States History. Could this be an attempt to wipe out the philosophy of the founders and replace it with a more socialist, progressive philosophy? I have no way of knowing with Cartesian certainty if this is so, but the time-line being discussed here is very suspect.
Making such a move will, nonetheless, do irreparable harm to an already anemic public education history curriculum. It is one thing to seek to educate it is quite another to open the door to indoctrination. When students have no point of reference or cornerstone on which to rest their minds they become disoriented to any direction offered them. This is the danger we now face.
If you would like to voice your opinion to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction their email is: feedback@dpi.state.nc.us.
Also, if you are unclear as to why progressivism is problematic, please read a post I previously wrote entitled Philosophical Dominoes.
This is so sad. I remember when I taking Latin I in high school, my teacher, Mrs Gladys Bailey, said that any nation that didn’t learn from history was certain to fall. Mrs Bailey said back then that America was repeating some of the same mistakes of the Roman Empire. If schools are not teaching history accurately and nations fall because of not learning from mistakes made in the past, then America may crumble and their younger generation will not even know why!!!