Wow, you learn something every day. I had no idea that the majority of the University of California schools don’t teach any American history at all. Thanks, Rick Santorum! Gosh, I wonder what they do teach, then. History of Lesbian African Marxist Muslims, probably. Or maybe he means that the defunding of public education has gone far enough that the UCs have completely eliminated the humanities, so it’s a sort of trick point, because they don’t teach any history.
Hey, I guess I should go look at their catalog because now I’m kind of curious.
Oh.
American history courses taught at UC Davis:
History of the United States, two-semester survey course
Social History of American Women and the Family.
Nature, Man and the Machine in America
Colonial America
The American Revolution
The Early National Period
Jacksonian America
Civil War and Reconstruction
The Civil War in American Film
Selected Themes in 19th Century American History
American Environmental History
Becoming an American: Immigration and American Culture
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
War, Prosperity and Depression: US 1917-1945
Selected Themes in 20th Century American History
American Intellectual History
Cultural and Social History of the United States
History of Black People and American Race Relations
Race in America
Asian-American History
American Political History (2 semesters)
Religion in American History
The Frontier Experience
History of Sexuality in America
History of Science in America
History of Technology in America
California History
And it’s the same everywhere except for UC San Francisco, which has decided in that peculiar way of medical schools that it should focus on medical training.
Gosh, does that mean Rick Santorum said something that’s so wrong it isn’t even a lie? How could that be?
Well, but surely they teach it in an un-American way, undermining their students’ inborn patriotism with leftist lies. That might as well not be American history, once they’re done with it!
When I was an undergraduate history major at Cornell, I had the interesting/terrifying experience of being cornered at a party by a friend’s father, who was a trustee at the school and a mid-level Bush I administration official. He was outraged that the distribution requirements in the history department required you to take at least one class that wasn’t U.S. history and one class that covered a period before 1800, but not vice versa (i.e., you could take all non-U.S. pre-1800 classes if you wanted). Since I was in the process of doing exactly what outraged him so much, I tried to answer as a little as possible. In my memory, he’s gesticulating with a highball glass, though I may have made that part up.
Rick Santorum is a lying, arrogant, god-drunk, sanctimonious little sh*thead, and he will never, ever, ever sit in the White House.
I think fairness that Santorum meant to say it was possible to graduate from a number of UC schools with a BA and not take any US history. That is quite different from there being no US history courses. But, there is a good argument for making US history mandatory for graduating from an institution of higher learning in the US.
I live in Africa and there are at least in Ghana no Lesbian African Marxist Muslims. Of those groups the only one besides obviously Africans that exist in any numbers are Muslims. Marxism unlike in Europe, Asia or even the US has very few followers in Africa and this has been an historical pattern for a long time. Other than South Africa there were no communist parties of any note on the continent in the 1930s. There was as far as I can tell never either a Communist Party of the Gold Coast or Communist Party of Ghana. The first country to go communist in Africa was Ethiopia in 1974. After that there was Angola and Mozambique in 1975. But, compare that to Asia where communists came to power in the USSR (Central Asia and Far East), China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and South Yemen. Likewise while there are lots of communists in the 20th century in Europe there are not many in Africa.
Unfortunately for Santorum, even your interpretation is not the case. Most UC history departments require students to take a US history course, and all UC undergraduates are required to take at least one class in American history or governance.
Not Berkeley:
http://catalog.berkeley.edu/undergrad/requirements.html
“American History and Institutions Requirements
The American History and Institutions (AH&I) requirements are based on the principle that a U.S. resident graduated from an American university should have an understanding of the history and governmental institutions of the United States. These requirements may be met as follows:
I. Ways to Satisfy the American History and Institutions Requirements Before Entering at Berkeley:
By fulfilling the portion of the “a†subject requirement for admission that consists of one year of U.S. history or one-half year of U.S. history and one-half year of U.S. government in high school with a grade of C or better. ”
I’d have to check it you can graduate from California secondary schools without a year of US History, but I certainly think most american high school students would meet that requirement at Berkeley…