“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” is a quote often attributed to American writer Mark Twain. Teaching history is critical, yet in Canadian classrooms a fulsome history curriculum is not required, and many students graduate high school having learned almost no Canadian history. Indeed, we’re not immune to repeating history’s darkest chapters. The antidote is education.

Along with ensuring children know how to read and do math (basic skills which are also in decline, per Canada’s latest PISA test scores), learning history is necessary to interpret current events. And it’s the key to unlocking critical thinking.

A recent poll showed nearly half of Canadian students say their critical thinking skills have declined with the use of AI apps such as ChatGPT.

After a landslide victory, Zohran Mamdani is now the mayor-elect of New York City. New Yorkers who voted for government grocery stores would have benefitted from a lesson on the famines and food shortages in the Soviet Union, where people waited in “bread lines” for basic necessities in the state-owned grocery system.

In Canada, those brushing off the cancellation of Jewish film festivals and participation in civic events, the repeated vandalization of synagogues, repeated gunfire targeting Jewish schools, and the physical attacks on Jewish university students may have benefited from education about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Podcast listeners embracing antisemitic commentators celebrating Hitler and Stalin south of the border might need some schooling, too.

Josef Stalin was the Marxist leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953, when he oversaw the murder of tens of millions of innocent people through execution and starvation. Communist regimes are responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people.

Yet about half of Canadian 18- to 24-year-olds believe socialism (closely related to communism) is an ideal economic system, and 17 per cent believe communism is ideal.

The Holocaust, which killed six million innocent Jews and millions of other people, including those who were gay, disabled or black, didn’t start with concentration camps. It started with a country facing serious economic and cultural problems, looking for someone to blame, mobilizing around a racist political party.

It started with an organized boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, the burning of Jewish books, and the steady segregation of Jews from public life. In 1934, Jewish actors were not permitted to perform. Jewish events were cancelled citing “security concerns.” It continued with smashing the windows of Jewish buildings in 1938, and with violent mobs attacking Jews that went unchecked—the latter continued even after the Holocaust ended.

In the age of algorithms, generative AI and TikTok, genuine history education might be more important than ever.

More than 25 years ago, Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein sounded the alarm that Canadian kids were receiving a woefully inadequate history education.

Today, the patchwork of Canadian history curricula has worsened. For example, in British Columbia and Ontario, K-12 history curriculum guides are vague and do not cover Canadian history well, leaving lesson content largely to the discretion of the teacher, meaning students in different classrooms are learning entirely different things. In B.C., the only concrete historical fact covered consistently is that past Canadian governments enacted discriminatory policies—certainly true and important, but not the sole thing Canadian youth need to know.

Neither B.C. nor Ontario require students to take a history course covering the full history of Canada. And neither province provides a chronological retelling of Canadian history. Canadian K-12 students move through their entire elementary and secondary school careers, not guaranteed to learn the history of Canada or the world.

This is a tragedy for these young people who might be inspired to greatness and understanding from this knowledge. But an even greater tragedy if we are ever doomed to repeat history because of it.

Paige MacPherson is a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute.