It's not some plot or anything, but there are a lot of teachers that don't know it. Most people don't know the city's history. That makes it the best time for teachers to slip in threads of Detroit history. Michigan would be a lot like Kansas without Detroit. But there is no standard Detroit curriculum for Michigan schools.
Educators say it's up to individual teachers to decide what gets taught and how.
Things come up in the classroom that I can tell the kids are genuinely interested in it, and we explore those. During a recent lesson on Thomas Edison, Kline mentioned his friendship with Henry Ford. Suddenly the kids wanted to know all about Ford, the man. Her students showered her with questions about Ford's age, his place of birth, his family. We got to talking about immigration, about the Germans, Polish and Southern African Americans coming up here to work.