Controversial issues have been around throughout history

I certainly agree that “Schools should teach Western civilization” (the title of Jonathan Zimmerman’s March 9 guest commentary).

Zimmerman, on the faculty at UPenn, shows how the movement to privilege the history and philosophy of the West, now prominent in states like Florida, should understand what it is wishing for. They are wishing for towering figures like Socrates, who “questioned everyone and everything.”

Of course, the “Great Books Curriculum” is not new, and Socrates, sentenced to death in 399 BC because the leaders of the Athenian state were alarmed by his ideas, deserves prominent billing.

Still, the traditions we should be teaching are much broader and older. A cursory view can jump along on famed stepping stones like Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed, Charlemagne, Pocahontas, George Washington, and Napoleon. Or, we can focus on dates, like 1492, 1607, 1619, 1776, or 1945.

But some of the themes still controversial today go back to the earliest recorded times. Surely those who today would ban history not to their liking would not object to students learning about Enheduanna, whose hymns as priestess of the goddess Nanna in Ur are the oldest known verses by any individual,

“Of course, the “Great Books Curriculum” is not new, and Socrates, sentenced to death in 399 BC because the leaders of the Athenian state were alarmed by his ideas, deserves prominent billing.”

around 4,500 years ago? Or Hammurabi, who issued the first known legal code as King of Babylon about 3,850 years ago? Or the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who initiated monotheism, briefly, in Egypt about 3,370 years ago? Or Spartacus, who in 73 BC initiated the slave revolt against the Roman Republic? Or the Emperor Constantine, who in 313 AD secured tolerance for the then minority Christians in his realm?

The more broadly we look at the issues that persist in American history — like the role of women, the rule of law, the ethics of slavery, the relation between state and religion — the better perspective we have on them… and on why they just won’t go away.