Mandate for Native American history contributes to teaching challenges

Regarding “Native American history would be the latest public schools requirement under bill” (May 19): There is nothing inherently wrong with a mandate to teach Midwestern Native American history along with other mandates requiring teachers to teach the Holocaust, women in history, Black history and Asian American history.

However, students and teachers should not be held responsible when students perform poorly on national test results because we have reached the point in which it is impossible to adequately cover all the topics in American history that need serious study.

When I was a student in the 1960s, teachers struggled to get to World War II, even though there were no mandates at the time. Since the 1960s, there are now a slew of complicated topics that are too numerous to mention.

Recently, I read an article about declining test scores in The New York Times. The test that was administered was the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and The New York Times had a sample quiz that readers could take. One question dealt with European explorers in the 1600s, and another one contained a passage from a proclamation signed by President George Washington that advocated neutrality while a war was raging on the European continent.

Frankly, I do not believe teachers have the time to focus on such issues, even though they are important areas that should be covered, so why should students and teachers be criticized for questions they answered incorrectly when they did not have the time to learn about them? I would be surprised if a significant number of students were to score well on any questions that deal with the early days of the republic, Jacksonian democracy and the Gilded Age, including all those presidents after Abraham Lincoln in the 1800s who remain a mystery to most Americans.

Considering the time constraints and the excess number of days when students are not in school due to holidays, teacher days, school improvement days and professional development days, it should not be surprising that students know so little about American history. Increased mandates make that even more difficult. That said, mandates concerning various groups of people who are part of the American experience are still too important to bypass.

As American historian Henry Steele Commager once wrote: “History teaches tolerance — tolerance with different faiths, different loyalties, different cultures, different ideas and ideals.”

— Larry Vigon, Chicago

The bill requiring the teaching of Midwestern Native American history is no doubt well-intended. However, I’ve found that when elected officials insert themselves into the classroom, it rarely comes out well.

This may be a radical request, but here goes nothing: Dear Illinois politicians, thank you for your interest, but please leave decisions about history curriculum and teaching to the history teachers.

— Matt Carey, history teacher, Glenbard North High School, Carol Stream

Regarding the op-ed “US health care system benefits insurers, not patients or doctors” (May 16): Sheldon Jacobson lost me at “a public good like health care services.” Also, the “system” should benefit doctors? Most of them are already for-profit!

Singling out insurance companies and not providers of care is not fair. Nearly one-quarter of the nation’s hospitals are for-profit. And with a surge in concierge physician practices, in which the patient has to fork over a “membership fee” to receive care, doctors seem to be doing just fine.

From a public versus private perspective, close to half of Americans are already covered by a government-run public health insurance program: Medicare (65 million), Medicaid (more than 84 million), the military’s Tricare (10 million) and the Affordable Care Act (16 million). Employer-based health insurance coverage (more than 150 million) is working just fine, with high customer satisfaction ratings on both sides of the employer/employee equation.

Moving the U.S. to a single-payer system is a pipe dream that voters and partisan politicians will never go for. Not-for-profit insurance companies? That isn’t going to happen either. The ins and outs of risk management make it unsustainable. Look at “not-for-profit” hospital systems — many are being called out for putting profits over patients.

The answer is collaboration between payers and providers along with public-private partnerships such as the ACA or Medicare Advantage plans. Stop the blame game and start working together!

— Lindsay Resnick, Chicago

Why should elders’ income be cut 3% per year, year after year? That is what the Tribune Editorial Board is advocating by campaigning for repeal of the pensions clause of the Illinois Constitution (“Chicago can’t afford $3 billion more in pension obligations,” May 16).

The editorial board implies that a 3% annual increase (roughly speaking, a cost-of-living adjustment) is extravagant, but in fact, it is only the average of inflation over the last 30 years. That is to say, 3% merely keeps the real value of the pension constant — not disastrously increasing, as the board implies.

Social Security benefits are adjusted for cost-of-living increases and rightly so. State and local pensions should be also. Besides, pensions are and should be a contractual obligation, a binding promise, quid pro quo. Remember the maxims: “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay,” and “The worker is worthy of his hire.”

Today for most workers, “the hire” is not straight cash by pay and benefits. Government workers have done and are doing the work. They should receive the compensation — including retirement — they were promised. And so should private sector workers.

— Carl P. Stover, Park Forest

While it is disappointing to see the printing of the Chicago Tribune move out of Chicago, I am relieved that the Tribune will still be printed on paper. The digital form of the Tribune is informative, but the paper form is a comfortable habit that should be indulged. Please keep those Schaumburg presses rolling.

— Nancy Ward, Yorkville, Illinois

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