I heard on the news that President and Mrs Bush are recommending that art be used to teach students about history. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? How about teaching HISTORY?
There are millions of us Baby Boomers who learned history from teachers and textbooks, although I believe our textbooks were actually historically correct if not politically correct to make it into today's schools. History was required from elementary school through high school. And for those of us who attended college in the 'olden days' were required at least 6 hours of college history. No one got out of it. When I went to college I had to take 3 hours of US history and 3 hours of World history.
The history we learned presented facts without political bias. I never knew in 13 years of history where my teachers stood politically. They taught the facts. As Sargeant Joe Friday on Dragnet used to say,"The facts, ma'am, just the facts." I will say that every history textbook had art of the particular era whether paintings, artifacts or photographs. These visualizations were important in learning history, but the art supplemented the text, not the other way around.
I think this more evidence of the dumbing down of America. History should be of the utmost importance in a curriculum. If we don't understand where we've come from, we will never know where we're going.
