Less American history for Bristol's high schoolers

At a time when experts are bemoaning the lack of knowledge by young people about America’s heritage, Bristol’s high school students will soon be required to take only a single year of American history.
Instead of taking U.S. history courses in their sophomore and junior years, students will get a single year of American history – focused on the period since the Civil War – while using the extra year to focus on the geography and culture of the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia.
“We need to catch up on global awareness,” said V. Everett Lyons, the principal of Bristol Eastern High School.
Lyons said the first half of American history, through the Civil War, is taught in middle school so it makes sense to ensure that students in high school are well-versed in what’s happened in the United States since then.
A single class, during their sophomore years, should fill that gap, school officials said. Advanced Placement U.S. history is an elective that some college-bound students can take after that single course.
Lyons said that administrators saw a need “to create an awareness beyond the borders of the United States” so they developed a new curriculum that will take effect next fall.
In the new scheme, freshman will still take a world history course that focuses on the Renaissance and all that has followed, including the rise of democracy.
Sometime after freshman year, students will take two semesters of Geography and Culture, one devoted to “an in-depth look at Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin/South America” and the other taking a similar tack with the Middle East and Asia.
The current 11th grade American history class, called American Humanities, will vanish.
David McCullough, a popular author and past president of the Society of American Historians, has testified before Congress that "we are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate" and oblivious to the roots of the country.
McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize winner with many bestsellers, said during a Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment of the Humanities that “for a free, self-governing people, something more than a vague familiarity with history is essential if we are to hold onto and sustain our freedom.”
"If you don't have any appreciation of what people went through to get, to achieve, to build what you are benefiting from," he said, "then these things don't mean very much to you. You just think, well, that's the way it is. That's our birthright. That just happened."
In addition to the AP U.S. history class, there is also an AP government and politics class that obviously deals on historical issues, as well as a civics course.

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com