Does that mean you are actually going to test on history? I was pretty mad when the physics professor actually put in a question about history on the exam. Its fine if they want to put sidebars in the textbook, but really if it is not tested it is going to have to be up to the student to take on an interest in the history and learn it.

Ack, I'm talking about education, not literacy and certainly not about passing tests. Let's get a little bit idealistic here. If you had a child what would you want it to know by the time it left high school, and what's the best way to teach it those things? I want my child to know not just about the major theories and processes and so on, but the historical context that caused them to arise.

What you think of some test is hugely about implementation details. Would you be less mad if you didn't have to deal with history as a separate subject? If the notion of tests didn't exist, and there were more positive motivations for students to study? If you already knew a more wide range of human history than most grad students today by the time you entered college, so you didn't have to study history anymore?