American history didn't begin in 1877

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has recently considered a plan to eliminate its usual 11th grade curriculum of American history dating back to the founding period, with an updated post-1877 history. The plan is supposed to make students connect more with modern history, allowing the youth of this great country more of the big picture as opposed to your run of the mill, outdated, boring history class of how we won the Revolutionary War and overcame a civil war … yawn.

Rebecca Garland, chief academic officer for the NCDPI, says that it's all cool though, because students learn American history in middle school, so there's really no need to repeat the whole thing all over again. I know that when I take a class, whether it be in college or high school, I remember everything I learned. So does everyone else. Just walk down the street and ask an unsuspecting citizen who Alexander Hamilton was and what he did, and I'm sure you'll receive a lengthy explanation.

I think there is a bigger problem at hand, which is the way American history is taught in the first place. When you teach the whole history in one year, you wind up covering World War II in two classes and the Reagan administration in half an hour. Another problem is that you have a lot of bad teachers. This is not just true for history classes, but it should be noted that when I was learning American history, teachers made it seem like the U.S. was just preordained to work as it turned out to be, which is not the case at all.

As we all know, history is not scripted; it is constantly being written. There was no guarantee that Washington would miraculously lead troops to victory at the Battle of Trenton, or that we would be able to form a union, despite strong sentiment against the notion, or that the Union would win the Civil War. In fact, if you actually read books on the founding of this country, you will see that the founders, who many history teachers present as agreeing on basic principles, tended to thoroughly dislike and disagree with each other on big issues including the power of the central government, immigration, executive discretion, etc.

I remember a few months ago when someone came up to the microphone at "The People Speak" event that NYU hosted to ask historian Howard Zinn why we have to learn about these "old white people" (in reference to the founders). This is the point of my article where you should be turning on the Battle Hymn of The Republic (pre-1877).

We didn't get to this point overnight and we weren't destined to be here. People put their principles, careers and lives on the line for us to be here. These people were greater men and women than we will ever be. It wasn't a magic trick. Poof: You now have freedom of speech. Poof: You now have the right to be a liberal ignoramus at NYU. It took many messy years for us to enjoy the luxuries we have today and some of the most important years that allowed this to happen took place long before Rutherford B. Hayes. It is my proposal that schools should offer two years, 11th and 12th grade, to cover American history while schools can teach global studies in ninth and 10th grades. This won't solve the problem of people not knowing our country's history, let alone other countries'. This can only be done through better teachers and smarter students.

If American history was taught the way it should be, by adding the dynamism, complexity and infighting that took place during the 18th and 19th centuries, relating colonial America to modern America wouldn't seem as strange to students as teachers make it to be. The problems we face today are just a speck in comparison to what we have gone through as a country and only historical perspective can reinforce this truth. How did we get here and what can we learn from the past in order to apply it to current situations? This is the whole point of learning history. This is why it's important to know it. And this is why it's important to know our own, pre- and post- 1877.