The Kingsport Times-News on implementing higher quality history curriculum in Tennessee schools:
There are lots of excuses for the continuing decline in teaching American history in public schools. But in some states, Tennessee for example, something is finally being done about it with Gov. Bill Lee expanding a program he began to recognize schools and districts that prioritize teaching history and civic values.
We’ve been aware of the erosion in teaching history for decades. In 1985, the New York Times found that “If knowledge of the past is in fact relevant to our ability to understand the present and to exercise freedom of mind - as totalitarian societies, both real and fictional, acknowledge by stringently controlling what may be studied or published - then there is cause for concern about many Americans’ sense of history.