this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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As a product of American eduation, I can say resolutely that no, that was absolutely not taught.
Of course, this is partially because American education sucks and partially because we never HAD common land here: everything was privately owned, after it was stolen from the people who already lived here, and then most of it had people who had no say in the matter enslaved to work on it for the people who stole the land.
Of course, this is ALSO not really taught, because it'd make people feel sad and make the US look kinda bad, so it's always talked about but you get like, a week of coverage on both subjects, at most.
It saddens me to hear that kids in the US don't learn about the fuckups of their ancestors, as this might "upset" them. My kids here in Germany learn about the Holocaust and they take trips to concentration camps so they learn about the past. Not to guilt them or shame them, but to teach them, so history doesn't repeat itself. (And we're not even native Germans, we're east European immigrants.)
The problem here is conservatives call learning about our past mistakes "woke" and do everything in their power to remove this curriculum from our schools. For some reason, they look at it as "trying to destroy our great nation and traditional values" instead of "learning from our past to be a better country going forward."
Except military, which they teach A LOT, we spent maybe 5 days on the crimes we committed against Native Americans, but an entire month or more on the Revolutionary War. Hell, we spent longer on learning about "world religions" than we did all our mistakes. Plus, any WW1/WW2 war crimes committed by our side is not taught whatsoever.
Nationalism is a disease.
I'm probably going to get mega canceled here but I think a good portion of it is that the Holocaust is history.
A lot of what we don't talk about is how we treated the Native Americans because we're STILL shitting on them from on high. For example, the Dakota Access Pipeline is the same old shit, different century.
Also talking about how we've treated people of color, and any discussion around chattel slavery, ends up being "uncomfortable" because an awful lot of people in this country don't seem to see any problem with it and would be perfectly happy if we could toss out the civil rights acts and go back to having separate water fountains.
TLDR: it's 'history' in Germany because ya'll arrest people giving nazi salutes, but in the US wearing a KKK robe is "free speech".
Agreed. American history is terribly white-washed.
Basically some dudes came over from England, Indians cooked them corn and turkey and everyone was happy. A few years later their descendants got mad at England, dressed up as the Indians and threw tea off a boat. Some shots were fired but we settled down over a piece of paper that guarantees freedom and guns for all.
Later you might learn that “all” means white land-owning males but eventually that got expanded and now we are al happy in the greatest country in the world (yes, that part is also taught), and every morning for 180 days of the year for 13 straight years we stand up and recite a poem about how much we love our country.
Maybe it’s changing, idk. I graduated the public school system 20 years ago. My kindergartener came home a few months ago saying he watched a video on MLK Jr in his class where they talked about his assassination. I thought that was a bit dark to go to in kindergarten but at least it’s talked about, even somewhat.
It’s all but against the law in Florida (maybe other states as well?) to teach that aspect of history. Wouldn’t want the white kids to feel guilty for being white… because they know about things that happened in the past.