Letters to the Editor: The case for more history classes in our schools

To the editor: At this point, the relative scarcity of time allotted in the school curriculum for U.S. history is a most serious issue. And, the problem intensifies as time passes. (“Why history is the most important subject in school today,� letters, Aug. 2)

For example, in my first year of classroom teaching in 1965, my school district’s curriculum naturally called for a full sweep of U.S. history. However, my college study in that chosen major instantly alerted me that I could easily take an entire semester to adequately cover our story since the end of World War II in 1945.

During that brief 20-year span, a number of important events occurred that greatly affected our lives today — and that does not even count what has happened since 1965. So, I entirely agree that schools should devote much more time to studying America’s story.

In these polarized times, discerning fact from fiction has become more challenging for us all. We cannot continue to allow our high school graduates to remain vulnerable to the increasing fiction simply because of a lack of basic knowledge of what actually did or did not happen before their time.

David M. Bouchier, Long Beach

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To the editor: In her op-ed article co-written with Benjamin Carter Hett, New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, my LAUSD graduate classmate, presented a convincing case that former President Trump’s statement about there being no need for future elections is in line with past dictators’ intolerance of popular sovereignty and democracy.

When we grow immune to the outlandish, we subtly allow the outrageous.

To combat this, California schools need to put more history courses in our curriculum, as students no longer understand World War II and its details, implications and meaning.

Instead of more remedial math and remedial English in our summer schools, we could create social studies electives that include civics, contemporary history and current events, including the war in Gaza, the Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions and much more.

These courses will re-engage our students post-COVID more than mandating any new courses.

David Tokofsky, Eagle Rock

The writer is a former teacher and a former Board of Education member in the L.A. Unified School District.