Family

I was speaking this week with my sister who teaches at Germantown High School in Philadelphia. I happened to mention to her the stat from the Tyrell book last week that prior to World War II, twenty-two states didn't require the teaching of history and I asked her what the requirement is now. She reminded me that she teaches algebra but also told me that students get four years of social studies that comprise one year of civics and three of history. "Why three?" I asked "when I attended high school in the School District of Philadelphia, it was only two" (world history was taught freshman year and US history when I was a junior.) She then reminded me that I was old (sisters ... gotta love em...) and then told me that students now are required to take a course in African-American history in tenth grade. The majority of students in the school district are African- American and they wanted to teach a course that would make them feel more "involved." Well this ties right in with many of the attitudes and comments that the respondents to Rosenzweig and Thelan's survey questions had ... 

When I mentioned this week's book to her and told her some of the stories that the various people in Florida , Wyoming and Tennessee had, she reminded me that we learned a lot of our "history" from our grandparents and parents. This has me wondering if the increased demand for history may have something to do with the increased strains on the American family. In my case we had, at one time, three generations living in one house and my other grandparents lived twenty minutes away. Nowadays, families may have three generations living across three states. 

I think Rosenzweig and Thelan did important work with their survey and with this book but I don't think they say anything that surprises me. (Well that's not true... I was surprised that so many people rely on movies rather than books for learning history. In this age of Oliver Stone's "JFK" and Quentin Tarrentino's "Inglorious Basterds" that's pretty shocking.) If anything I would have been surprised if people weren't interested in their history.  All of us want to know where we came from and what "family" we're a part of.