West Virginia is pushing to condense the teaching of high school history to one course

Charleston Gazette-Mail:

Notice the wall clock. Because, ‚murica.

“Going at such a rapid pace for all of U.S. history would just … you would have no downtime to really stop and get in-depth with some complex things and topics that deserve quite a bit of time,” Eric Starr, who teaches social studies at Tug Valley High, in Mingo County, said.

As for the Holocaust, he said he anticipates spending less than one lesson on it in one day, probably with just one more day to touch on it during a content refresher.

“I’ll probably teach it in one big lesson that is WWII,” he said. “I will probably just have one large PowerPoint — very large PowerPoint — that is WWII and I’ll probably just give it a few slides with that and talk about the gravity of it and then move on.”

The one-course path also contains no mention of Vietnam, a war comparable to the United States’ current Middle Eastern conflicts.

The one-course path has a standard saying students should be able to “trace the events of the Cold War and confrontations between the United States and other world powers,” but nothing specifically requiring teaching about the Vietnam or Korean wars.

An explanatory note for foreign readers: this article, as well as the State of West Virginia, (or the United States for that matter), is not parody, or some sort of weird performance art. Their existence is quite real. They may be nightmares, but they are not delusions.

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