Monday, May 21, 2012

A Diploma for Every Occasion! or Purpose . . . or Whatever . ..

Seems like Global History is getting the short shrift in the latest "improvement" to come out of our Albany Educrats.

From OD's view: Regents' plan for diploma options should get OK

Beginning in 2013, students entering ninth grade would have a choice of three possible pathways to graduation:

The traditional Regents diploma. . . .

A Career and Technical Education diploma. This would require students to pass Regents exams in English, math, science and U.S. history. Instead of the global history exam, they would take a CTE assessment that meets the college and career-ready level of rigor.

The STEM diploma. This focuses on science, technology, engineering and math. Students who choose this path would substitute a second math or science assessment for the global history requirement. . .
What do the Regents have against Global History?

Read between the lines: The Regents are preparing students either for college or for some line of work as though those are the only two purposes of a public school education. 

What ever happened to the idea of creating a knowledgeable population that can think for itself?

While many fail to see the importance of learning history (I was once in this category) the things that are happening today in the news are really not that different from what has happened before. People should be aware of global history to be aware of where their society may be headed. With awareness comes the power to avoid the mistakes of the past through the power of the ballot box . . . Ignorance will doom society to repeat the sins of the past.

The intent of the Regents seems pretty apparent: The Regent's Diploma students get Global History. They are being groomed to be the future leaders of a new global society. The rest are trained to be cogs in that society's machinery, merely to produce needed goods and services. Deliberately keep them ignorant of global history and they won't be able to muck up the New World Order.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, bullcrap. Gettin' a little paranoid in your old age?

Greens and Beans said...

How stupid! Who needs Global History anyways?

What did the U.S. learn from the 1979 – 1988 Soviet Union’s “Vietnam War” with Afghanistan? It was such a failure that it was also entitled as the Soviet “Bear Trap.” Perhaps this U.S. Administration should have attended Global History classes too. It’s all a part of the “Dummying down of America” tragedy. If we don’t learn from global history, we will shed precious blood from our ignorance of it.

Dave said...

It does seem an odd plan. But before I assume the Regents are ushering a Brave New World, I'd seek an explanation. It might be, for example, World History may be wrapped into other Social Studies coursework. And one could argue (back in my day, anyway) that World History, as taught, contains an awful lot of European history that is no more than Wars of Princes.