Week 05

Dear Principal,

It has come to my attention that lamentably certain history is being edited out of classrooms. I feel that at a high school level, this should not be happening whether it is being edited out of textbooks or censored by school boards. Don't half inform us out of fear that the history is too strong, disturbing or controversial.
As a student I go to school to learn. I go to school expecting and trusting that my teachers are giving me precise information. In math, teachers don't half teach equations, but instead shine light on all angles to better our understanding. In my anatomy, english, nor french textbooks do they cut out needed information, yet my history book do? Why? This shouldn't be a Scopes Trail event.
I can not fully grasp a subject, and I doubt fellow classmates can, if the part that impacts is taken out. A history teacher shouldn't have to say "the Rape of Nanking devastated China" and move on, or worse not even mention the genocide. From the very start of our academic carrier we were taught to ask the Five W's; who, what, when, where, and why; however, now as we advance they take them away. To only know that the Chinese and Japanese have a conflict that helps trigger World War Two doesn't do much for me and makes me feel like it must not be important if the teacher is so lightly going over it. A conflict doesn't make me think 300,000 killed and 20,000 raped.
More over, the life of those people that died are being degraded in a way by not talking about it. In 8Th grade a poster I saw a poster that really stuck with me that read "The worst thing we can do is forget." The background was of a little girl with older men faded in a concentration cap. The little girl had every day clothes on but with a the star of David sown on her dress while the older men were just skin and bones with very few clothes on. I agree with the poster, what a down fall it would be to forget the extent of the Holocaust and run the danger of it some day being erased from history. Don't let those deaths along with other acts of genocide not mean anything.
Each time teachers are forced to deny and skip a part of history to their students they are forced to conform and lower standards which then goes into a cycle that only leads to no history at all being taught. As a principal you should encourage classes teaching the subject they are meant to.



Sincerely, Natalia Riveros- Martinez
Student of Celebration High School