Keep Right – Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
We need your help. Only citizen action can mandate the teaching of the history of Western civilization to every Idaho high school student. Led by Rep. Joe Alfieri and Sen. Ben Toews, our state legislators are considering a new law that would require that everyone pursuing a diploma as of the class of 2030 must take and pass one year of such a course. They face an uphill fight.
Citizen action is indispensable because every element of the educational establishment has gone off-mission from their core duty. Educational leaders have forgotten that schools exist to acculturate, to introduce young people to the skills and shared ideals of their own society.
US citizens need to be taught about the truths that Jefferson once said we hold to be self-evident. The heritage of freedom has in it lessons of limited government, loyal opposition, and fidelity to constitutional means over short-term political ends. It includes:
- Hammurabi’s Code
- The Ten Commeandments
- Athenian Democracy
- The Twelve Tables
- The Roman Republic
- Judeo-Christian Convictions
- Justinian’s Code
- Magna Carta
- The Protestant Reformation
- The Glorious Revolution (1688)
- The English Bill of Rights (1689)
- Enlightenment Philosophy
- English Common Law
America’s public schools were first established to prepare the children of immigrants from all over the world to responsibly exercise their franchise by teaching this tradition. This is the justification for all history and social studies curricula.
Yet, Idaho currently makes no requirement that high school students be systematically introduced to the unique cultural heritage that produced and continues to energize our republic.
Currently, Idaho standards encourage one year of “World History & Civilizations” to be taught somewhere between grades six and nine. US History I is now taught anywhere between grades six and twelve. Grades ten through twelve are now devoted to US History II, US Government and Politics, and Economics. This model fails to teach the deep heritage of the US Constitution to every student, when they are at a level of maturity to benefit from this instruction.
Most middle school students simply lack the intellectual sophistication and emotional maturity to understand the complexities and subtleties that comprise notions of human freedom and value.
“World History” by its insistence on being culturally neutral, does not sufficiently focus on the complex narrative history of the West necessary to comprehend where our founders found their inspiration.
“United States History” begins this tale too late. If our founders’ ideas are understood in context, they can be appreciated as the wisdom that results from thousands of years of history. If students have no sense of this context, of the deeper pedigree of their ideas, than the founders’ convictions can be dismissed as merely outdated opinion.
This reasoning is simply alien to the habits of thought trained into today’s educational leaders. That is why this kind of reform will never arise from the educational establishment. The very philosophical language that credentialed administrators use to consider matters of school policy have no words for what lies at the heart of this reform proposal.
Their pedagogical training insures that, as a group, they will be largely blind to the need for such a requirement. Worse, they will be reflexively hostile to it because, to them, requiring passing a year of Western civilization comes out of proverbial “left field”.
Debbie Critchfield, Idaho’s current superintendent for public instruction, understood this institutional prejudice when she went outside the educational establishment to add a financial literacy component to Idaho’s school requirements. She employed a legislative solution to this problem; a problem that was not seen as pressing by the educational establishment.
It is the same with this reform. Only the public, which has not been misled into the institutional group-think of today’s educational leaders, can see the need for every Idaho student to systematically understand their own shared cultural heritage. Only citizens from outside the establishment have an understanding that there is more at stake in education than are dreamt of in their pedagogies.
If you agree, please contact your state representatives and senator to express your support for making passing a year of the history of western civilization a high school graduation requirement in the state of Idaho.
