History is toast?

I read an article an a newspaper yesterday that stated New York schools wouldn’t be offering social studies/history on the curriculum and instead be concentrating on the core subjects of English and Maths. Mmm, smacks of tunnel vision to me.

How can a person study English Literature without Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Homer, et al? Not really possible, but how can a person study these when they are not in context of a historical period? If the life and times of the stories are not known, then how much sense will they make to the modern child? I reckon it would have about the same impact as the Muppets.

As a species, we collectively learn by our mistakes and generally try not to repeat them. What happens when the slate gets wiped clean? How far is this anti history going to go? Are we to lose nursery rhythms as a lot of these are based on history? Hope this doesn’t come to pass.

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