To the editor: At this level, the relative shortage of time allotted within the college curriculum for U.S. historical past is a most severe subject. And, the issue intensifies as time passes. (“Why history is the most important subject in school today,” letters, Aug. 2)
For instance, in my first 12 months of classroom educating in 1965, my college district’s curriculum naturally referred to as for a full sweep of U.S. historical past. Nonetheless, my school research in that chosen main immediately alerted me that I might simply take a whole semester to adequately cowl our story because the finish of World Struggle II in 1945.
Throughout that temporary 20-year span, quite a few vital occasions occurred that drastically affected our lives immediately — and that doesn’t even rely what has occurred since 1965. So, I fully agree that faculties ought to commit way more time to learning America’s story.
In these polarized instances, discerning reality from fiction has turn out to be tougher for us all. We can’t proceed to permit our highschool graduates to stay weak to the growing fiction merely due to a scarcity of primary data of what truly did or didn’t occur earlier than their time.
David M. Bouchier, Lengthy Seaside
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To the editor: In her op-ed article co-written with Benjamin Carter Hett, New York College historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, my LAUSD graduate classmate, presented a convincing case that former President Trump’s assertion about there being no want for future elections is in keeping with previous dictators’ intolerance of widespread sovereignty and democracy.
Once we develop resistant to the outlandish, we subtly enable the outrageous.
To fight this, California faculties have to put extra historical past programs in our curriculum, as college students now not perceive World Struggle II and its particulars, implications and that means.
As a substitute of extra remedial math and remedial English in our summer time faculties, we might create social research electives that embody civics, modern historical past and present occasions, together with the warfare in Gaza, the Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions and way more.
These programs will re-engage our college students post-COVID greater than mandating any new programs.
David Tokofsky, Eagle Rock
The author is a former instructor and a former Board of Schooling member within the L.A. Unified Faculty District.
