Not only not taught, but false skewed history put in its place…
Via NY Post:
From the first hot dog to the last firework bursting over the East River, this year’s Independence Day celebrations will again demonstrate our collective pride in our nation, its traditions and its history.
Too bad ever fewer Americans know much about that history, since our public education establishment doesn’t put much priority on teaching it, or on instructing young minds in the basics of civics.
Teaching citizenship has always been a core purpose of public schools, yet government requirements are now focusing achievement goals on math and reading. The importance of civics and US history in the classroom is in fast decline.
New York and 40-plus other states have signed on to the Common Core State Standards, whose content standards focus exclusively on English and math. That means teachers and policymakers will need to take steps to ensure that the teaching of US history and civics doesn’t continue to slide.
A general disregard for our national heritage is trickling down through the system. Measurements by the federal Education Department and private groups have consistently found American students’ basic knowledge of US history to be sorely lacking and getting worse over time.
An important place to start, as many public-school classrooms do, is with the Pledge of Allegiance. Happily, the Pledge prevailed in its latest legal battles in courts when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in favor of its use as a patriotic oath.
But while most students recite the Pledge daily, their understanding of their own history and civic engagement fails.
The civic mission of schools is crucial to American public education, yet our public schools fail to prioritize history and civics — which are often drowned out within the ever-broadening subject of “social studies.”
Until the middle of the 20th century, most American high schools offered three courses in civics and government, focusing on current events, civic engagement and democracy as a whole — topics that are now lumped together, and subjects for which schools are rarely held accountable for teaching well.
Civics even used to be required in elementary-school curricula, but no longer in most states.