I'LL TRADE YOU "EVOLUTION" FOR THE CIVIL WAR

Nathan Newman points to this AJC op-ed by high school teacher Joseph Jarrell on Georgia's proposed curriculum changes. While the elimination of the word "evolution" from the science curriculum has gotten most of the attention (at least in the media I consume regularly), to me the most startling part of the proposed high school history curriculum is that the Civil War and Reconstruction are left out entirely:

The present 11th-grade U.S. history course covers the Exploration period to today. In the proposed changes, teachers will spend two or three weeks discussing the foundation of our country, with the remaining time devoted to studying events from 1876 to the present. Gone is any mention of the Louisiana Purchase or Lewis and Clark. There will be no discussion of Indian removal and the Trail of Tears.

Students probably will not be remembering the Alamo; it won't be a topic of discussion in Georgia's high schools. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay will be omitted, as well as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad.

Search in vain for discussion of the Civil War; that topic is off limits. In a course entitled "American History," students will not study our most devastating war. There is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years.

This of course means no discussion of the failed promises of reconstruction, the court's evisceration of the 14th Amendment as a protection for African-Americans, the legal foundations of either slavery or segregation, or the relationship between constitutional government and civil war. This is not to say that the status quo is all that great on these issues, either, as Jarrell notes. Still, it's hard not to see the curriculum changes as embracing a false view of American constitutional development: Fouding. . .blip. . .twentieth century.

If you really have to, leave the word "evolution" out, but please don't skip constitutional evolution.