Sunday, February 7, 2010

History lessons vary for Colorado students - The Denver Post

History lessons vary for Colorado students - The Denver Post:

"The Great Depression. Stomach-churning slaughterhouse depictions from Upton Sinclair. Immigration. Cubans, the U.S.S. Maine and muckrakers. Prisoners buried alive, upside down, by barbarians.

Welcome to history, U.S. and otherwise, as offered in Colorado high schools. It is taught in classrooms with flat-screen TVs and classrooms barely up to code, to students relaxing in armchairs, students with keen interest and big aspirations and students blocking out the whole business with headphones.

If government mandates, No Child Left Behind and the Colorado Student Assessment Program have created lock- step, fill-in-the-blank curricula for math and reading, as some claim, there can be no such complaints about history."