George Washington University drops American history requirement
The coming dark age: George Washington University has eliminated the requirement that its history majors take American history.
The department eliminated requirements in U.S., North American and European history, as well as the foreign language requirement. Thus, it is possible that a student can major in history at GWU without taking a survey course on United States history.
The new requirements mandate at least one introductory course, of which American history, World History and European civilization are options. Yet, like at many elite universities, the introductory course requirement may be fulfilled by scoring a 4 or a 5 on the Advanced Placement exams for either U.S. History AP, European History AP or World History AP.
As a result, it will be possible for a graduate of this university’s history department to earn a degree and not even know who the university is named after.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The coming dark age: George Washington University has eliminated the requirement that its history majors take American history.
The department eliminated requirements in U.S., North American and European history, as well as the foreign language requirement. Thus, it is possible that a student can major in history at GWU without taking a survey course on United States history.
The new requirements mandate at least one introductory course, of which American history, World History and European civilization are options. Yet, like at many elite universities, the introductory course requirement may be fulfilled by scoring a 4 or a 5 on the Advanced Placement exams for either U.S. History AP, European History AP or World History AP.
As a result, it will be possible for a graduate of this university’s history department to earn a degree and not even know who the university is named after.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Related because its about false and dishonest education and academics:
Can someone comment on the likelihood of this Micheal Mann court case going forward?
http://www.ecowatch.com/michael-mann-defamation-lawsuit-2161974299.html?utm_source=EcoWatch+List&utm_campaign=e1e19f48dd-MailChimp+Email+Blast&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_49c7d43dc9-e1e19f48dd-85897741
Can’t wait for the medical degrees program to eliminate anatomy as a requirement. After all, the scientific method is just a tool of white supremacist oppression.
Depending on the high school, an AP class could be better than their intro class in college. Considering most high schools require a couple years of foreign language, this doesn’t make sense, as well as the foreign language requirement. I don’t know but I am guessing that requirement includes what you studied in high school.
Ack! Forgot to close the tag…
American history is required in high school. Colleges typically haven’t required this in many decades. I took Western Civilization way back in the early 70’s to meet the general education requirement at Clemson. I loved Greek and Roman history. I would have been bored with a rehash of American, although I’m sure we would have gone into greater depth at the college level.
Without American history how will the students learn we’re the bad guys? Oh, in every other class.
Oh c’mon guys what difference does it make – even now! Our current president once said “Did Barack Obama say that he had visited ‘fifty-seven states’?” Heck if a highly educated constitutional lawyer says it’s 57 then who are we to argue??
So I guess American colleges will drop course studying major math and science theory’s and go with Harry Potter and Unicorns.
Our colleges and universities have turned a dangerous corner.
They have forsaken the pillars of our own history … and those of the rest of civilization. It is now a short slide to peril.
George Washington University’s shocking decision to slenderize this nation’s history is a foppish curtsy to kumbaya, globalistic claptrap.
It seems some have opted for a bargain-priced buffet of historical tidbits that have no particular arrangement of importance at all. Just politically-correct trivia to be sampled for a temporary tasting experience … and then to be unremembered.
Current academics are not really scholars at all, but rather sensitively schooled historical tip-toers who have, at best, popcorn knowledge of the figures and forces of the past. They search more for historical bruises than for historical truths because they are in the indictment business. And America, it seems, is ever-accused.
It’s not historical scholarship at all.
It’s polite, inoffensive memorabilia elevated to unreasoned importance that’s now misinterpreted as mastery. It is sickeningly tenderized for today’s finger-pointers who are in a desperate sniff for those historical excuses known as “root causes”.
It represents retrieval talents rather than the talent of synthesis. It’s “Jeopardy” scholarship … sufficient to navigate through most circumstances without being exposed, but still bereft of the intellectual fitness needed to respond credibly to moments of challenge.
True education helps construct a hearty, general fund of information that sits at the immediate ready for agile thinkers to retrieve, restitch, reconfigure, and requilt as demanded by the moment.
It allows for the speedy understanding of parallels with the past that might reason the present. It fosters a quick reminder that any quick answers to complex issues or events are most likely too quick. And too sloppy. Quick should never be a goal of education.
Proper education cultivates nimble thinkers who can rolodex their sharpened minds with relative ease to summon up worthy understandings. Intellectual introspection. “Heavy thinking” to most of us bar-brains.
This new and disturbing development is not just a higher learning phenomenon. It all begins in the earliest grades.
Curricula have been pared into paint-by-the-numbers education. Essential chunks of valued information have been crowded out to make room for comforting nonsense favored by social justice junkies. Third, sixth, and tenth graders are openly trained to be overly sensitive, politically-correct reactors rather than reasoned responders.
Course contents have been so slimmed that our young learners have become historical anorexics.
It is there … at the elementary and middle school levels … that disturbing decisions are made about this long range journey called education. These are conscious choices that some have championed with more gusto than those who advocate for the less frenetic route of measured brain-growing that is more in sync with the maturing process.
And that maturing process is never uniform. Or on time. Maturity matures at different moments for different learners. Sometimes education is a practice in patience.
Any child can be taught to play a violin well-enough to wow a crowd. But can that small wonder marvel another audience decades down the road with original compositions or interpretations? Those are two vastly different things.
As a culture, we seem more prone to reward the student who glistens in the immediate moment rather than those who become real masters through an intellectual evolution that requires more patience, less specificity, and even a bit of uncertainty. That is how genuine education generally unfolds.
It’s the difference between a performer and a virtuoso. And the difference has now become obvious.
This is not how a torch is passed from one generation to the next. This is how a culture begins to rubble itself.
American education needs rescuing. And so does this nation.
Denis Ian