so--i need to vent. for those who know me, you'll know that i have a 20 year old daughter and an 18 year old son who both graduated from high school recently in rapid city, SD. so, this is the thing. last night after thanksgiving dinner was over, while my hub and sons were playing game, my daughter and i sat down to watch a movie.
we're looking through netflix looking for something good. we happened on Skin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_(2008_film) --if you haven't seen it, consider it, it's quite good--but this post is not about that. Skin is a movie about a girl, born in South Africa during apartheid. my daughter says, something like "how about this? apparently South Africa had something like segregation". WHAT????? i say "well it was far moreso than segregation ever was." we start watching the movie.
by the end it is clear that A. has never talked about apartheid in school. ever. she explains that she did watch a movie a couple of times that she didn't really understand at the time that takes place in the US about a white girl who comes over from south africa as an exchange student and lives with a prominent black family in the US. she commented that while watching it she couldn't understand what the big deal was about. that now after some minor discussion about apartheid she understood better.
so i started asking about what exactly she had studied in social studies in high school. i stupidly assumed since she was doing well in school that i didn't need to worry about her learning the appropriate information about history. here's what came out.
she studied ancient civilizations. sort of. she seemed to study Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and Aztec, Mayan, and other new world cultures, pre-white colonization. she took a class in American History in which they discussed colonization, the civil war through the first world war. she took civics, they studied the US gov't. system, but not much else. she did study a bit about WWII but only in English classes because they read A Diary of Anne Frank and Night. in one class they watched Schindler's List and some footage of a concentration camp. she also studied a bit about The Great Depression, again in English because they read a book about it.
what they never discussed in Social Studies classes, or elsewhere: it didn't sound like they really discussed much about the time between the revolutionary war and the civil war or the time between the civil war and WWI. almost nothing about WWI in world terms. bordering on nothing about the roaring 20s, the stock market crash, the dirty thirties, the great depression, the causes of WWII, Hitler, (lots about the Holocaust tho--which does help), nothing about the cold war, McCarthy, the Civil Rights movement-either here in the US or elsewhere other than Tienanmen Square (they watched some footage of it), little or nothing about the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the Hostage Crisis, practically nothing about any other countries histories, very little about other forms of government, almost nothing about the end of the cold war and the wall coming down. nothing about apartheid (she had actually never heard of it), practically nothing about segregation, the freedom riders, ok--the list goes on and on and on.
my son wandered in after a bit (he's 18 and graduated HS last year) he agreed. he had apparently studied a bit about a couple things that Amanda had not, but generally his experiences were identical.
HOW CAN THIS BE? not studied a few things here and there i'd understand. but all those things? that is pretty much the entirety of the 20th century that they didn't study. modern history. the things that have gone into making our world what it is today. What the HELL? I'm truly grateful for the English teachers who did cover some history because with them, my daughter would never have studied WWII at all. AT ALL. as it was, they only really covered the Holocaust and not really much about the Nazis or Hitler or what made that situation possible.
i guess as a means to make sure they understand more about the world, i'll be looking for movies that will lead to lots more discussions like the one last night. we discussed enough about apartheid to get Amanda interested enough so she'll likely go do some research herself. i'm pretty sure i saw a movie about the freedom riders, i'm thinking that's on for tonight.
Yikes! My recollections are of learning a lot about the civil rights movement, including women's suffarage. Although I remember that these were presented in an "achievement unlocked" sort of way rather than significant changes that were still in progress. (I graduated high school in '89).
ReplyDeleteHi Rita,
ReplyDeleteIf you don't have it already, consider picking up a copy of An Incomplete Education. It's not perfect by any means, but I think I learned more in a week from it than four years of high school social studies classes.
I totally agree with your assessment! Sad, but true. My high school career was in the early '90s, but had the same complete gaps, or even more so. I don't think we covered much of American history beyond the Civil War. Luckily, I took AP European History, so I had a basic historical framework from that perspective. But how Europe or America has interacted with the rest of the world? Little or nothing...
ReplyDeleteThat is great that you are able to broaden the horizons beyond school. I don't know where the curriculum come from for the schools.
ReplyDelete