Public education is a beautiful thing. It ideally takes kids from all walks of life, regardless of any outside factors, and gives them an equal and undeniable opportunity to learn.
Again, ideally, it should be the place where kids learn to become good citizens.
All of the subjects — from math to history — are important for kids to learn. They lay the foundation for future informed voters and can inspire an interest in a field of study that can be explored later in life.
Yet, given the political and cultural climate, it seems people are not being given equal opportunities in our public schools. And before Sen. Phil Berger slides in here and blames it on the teachers, we would like to say it is not their fault. It isn’t even really Berger’s fault either. It goes much deeper.
Let’s take history classes for example. Almost all of the important figures students learn about are men who come from Western Europe with maybe the exception of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians — who are still considered parts of the “western canon.”
Once we get into American history, the narrative focuses on white men with only a few tokenistic women and minorities thrown into the narrative. Of course, white men were the majority of American politicians from our country’s inception to now, but the U.S. was not, and should not, be defined only by our political history.
These figures do not exist only on a page. They have the ability to inspire. White students learn about all the good, and a limited amount of the bad, that their ancestors did. Why is this not afforded to other groups?
Moving on to science, to this day, the notion that science is a “manly” field discourages women from pursuing passions in it. Couple that with the history of science largely ignoring female pioneers, and it is clear why many young women would feel like science is not for them.
How do we change this? Well since public education is well, public, the responsibility is on all levels of society.
