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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I think you may be looking through rose-tinted glasses at Europe post World War 2. Consider the following:
- Britain doing everything in its power to support Apartheid South Africa until the late 80s.
- The Troubles in Ireland.
- France and their Colonial Wars in the 50's and the 60's, especially Algeria and Vietnam.
- Portugal and their Colonial Wars until 70's.
- Francoist Spain.
- The USSR/Russia in its entirety, with only a brief respite in the 90's.
- The Violence and Genocides in the Balkans in the 90's.
Now I know this is General US Politics, but I do want to point out that Europe didn't become some bastion of Liberalism and Friendliness even after the horrors of World War II and Nazism and Fascism. No country is perfect, and while the US made a mistake in electing Donald Trump, to act like Europe after World War 2 became a paragon of virtue is unrealistic.
Edited by DingoWalley1 on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:02:27 AM
My public schools definitely didn't shy away from talking about the genocide of The Native Americans or Slavery. Actually, about 80% of my schooling on history, I believe, seemed to think of themselves as deprogramming from previous propaganda, not that there wasn't actual propaganda too.
From my personal experience, I'd say some things worth noting:
-Native Americans are generally portrayed as Noble Savages who don't have much history outside of being the victims of white cruelty.
-I feel as though it's necessary to emphasize that the treatment of them was controversial at the time and that various 'white' settlers had different methods for dealing with them (for example, the Spanish were awful, the French were relatively nice, and Britain and America were somewhere in the middle). Why? Because it's too easy to dismiss it as an inevitable tragedy, rather than choices that people made.
-I also feel as though the modern situation Natives have is glossed over quite a bit. This is also a problem because, well, it's easy to forget they still exist and that they're still being mistreated. The past is the past, but the present we can control.
-There's a disturbing tendency to bothside the Civil War.
-They never do talk about how The French bailed us out of the Revolution.
-Strangely, most of them do seem to have some kind of axe to grind with America. As you can probably tell by my avatar, I'm not overly fond of this either.
For what it's worth, what I'd recommend for schooling trying to instill a sense of patriotism is to simply teach from multiple points-of-view. The oppressed are just as much a part of The Great American Tradition™ (T-GAT) as the oppressors, if not more so.
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And let's not forget that Trump's win didn't happen in a vacuum. It was part of a general wave of populist nationalism. The Brexit Leave vote winning around the same time wasn't a coincidence. And not long after that, Bolsonaro won in Brazil. There was also a real concern that Marine Le Pen would win in France, and what that would mean for the EU.
Edited by M84 on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:09:09 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAs we are talking education, is there still the Texas textbook problem?
This being the idea that Texas has a huge influence on education nationally because their sheer size means that they buy the most textbooks. And so publishers tailor their textbooks to what would appeal to the various school boards in Texas. Which typically means it'll be closer to the "patriotic" history Trump is endorsing.
(It also means that Intelligent Design gets snuck into science textbooks.)
As publishers don't want the expense of tailoring their books for each individual state, the Texas edition becomes the defacto national standard.
So yeah, is that still a thing?
The problem for Native Americans is that they don't really have a written history beyond their interactions with settlers, so it is pretty much inevitable that any history taught about them will be in the context of their relationship with those settlers.
I don't know how to solve that. You could go into oral traditions and culture, but at that point you are starting to drift away from teaching actual history.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesOnce Trump is safely out of office, he can bray to his heart's content. All his political influence will be gone.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I agree that colonialism does get portrayed as an inevitable tragedy for native Americans quite a lot, rather than as a set of conscious choices made by settlers. It sort of ends up absolving settlers of responsibility. The "most of them got wiped out by disease before colonists even got to them" narrative is also part of that.
What I meant is, is there still a nuclear deal with Iran to be had at all? Is Iran still willing to play ball after what Trump did to the deal?
Edited by Redmess on Sep 17th 2020 at 4:32:39 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesThe problem for Native Americans is that they don't really have a written history beyond their interactions with settlers, so it is pretty much inevitable that any history taught about them will be in the context of their relationship with those settlers.
I admittedly don't know much about Native American history, but I remember reading that part of the problem is that Native American people's history continues after 1492 and is still ongoing, but it's treated as if they are only a part of the past and discussed only in the context of their contact with Europeans/white Americans. They have written histories, but it's largely glossed over and ignored.
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I meant they have no written pre-colonial histories, which means their history will always be in the context of their colonial history, even in the present day.
And yes, Native Americans get routinely depicted as being a part of history, rather than the present. And not just in history. I remember being surprised at one point that they were still around, given how they are usually depicted as part of the Wild West narrative but nothing beyond that.
As for Iran, I don't blame them for not being willing to consider another nuclear deal. What the US did was a major breach of trust, something you don't just repair by electing a Democrat. Breaking treaties made by previous administrations is a real quick way to become seen as inherently unreliable.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 17th 2020 at 4:58:27 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesPolitico:
More than 35,000 mail-in ballots were rejected in Florida primary
More than 35,500 vote-by-mail ballots didn't count in Florida's recent primary, rejected because of missed deadlines or technical flaws, an analysis for POLITICO has found.
The rejections, which accounted for about 1.5 percent of the total vote, came as the battleground state prepares for what could be record voter turnout in the too-close-to-call November presidential election.
Nearly 66 percent of the rejected absentee ballots were disqualified because they arrived after Florida's 7 p.m. Election Day deadline. The rest didn't meet signature match requirements used by county election supervisors to verify voters identities, the analysis from University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith showed.
"This could be a huge problem in November," Smith said. "We could exceed 100,000 vote-by-mail ballots that don't count."
With this and disenfranchisement, Florida continues to be a massive headache.
Edit:
Ah, you were talking about pre-colonial history. And Native American activists and historians talk about your second point, saying that depicting them as part of the past makes it harder to address ongoing, current injustice.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 17th 2020 at 8:00:01 AM
The entire continents of Africa and South America get painted with that brush too. "Naked savages living in straw huts and rolling around in the dirt until white people happened. And then there were a bunch of human atrocities and it was terrible for a while but now the survivors live among us and have wi-fi internet."
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 17th 2020 at 8:00:48 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
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Awareness of African pre-colonial history seems to have grown by leaps and bounds in the past few decades, at least. But Africa and South America run into similar problems with a scarcity of written records before Europeans arrived. Not to mention that tropical climates are not exactly conducive to archaeological expeditions, or preservation for that matter.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 17th 2020 at 5:05:03 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesHuffPo has a clip of Tommy Tuberville talking about the Voting Rights Act
, and it's uh, not very inspiring.
"You know, the thing about the Voting Rights Act it's, you know - there's a lot of different things you can look at it as, you know, who's it going to help? What direction do we need to go with it? I think it's important that everything we do we keep secure. We keep an eye on it. It's run by our government. And it's run to the, to the point that we, it's got structure to it. It's like education. I mean, it's got to have structure. Now for some reason, we look at things to change, to think we're gonna make it better, but we better do a lot of work on it before we make a change."
This man is going to be a Senator in January, short of a second miracle, and he sounds like a student trying to bluff his way through a report on a book he never read.
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It does depend on the area a bit. The Texas Board of Ed has a list of approved materials that schools are allowed to choose from so there is some variation in books between different schools and districts. Here’s a good explainer on the issue with some examples: [1]
Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 17th 2020 at 8:11:31 AM
They should have sent a poet.

"Same here, but that's probably a sign of how varied the quality of public education can be in the USA. In my case, I grew up in an affluent area in California where the public schools were well-funded."
I grew up — and still live — in the wealthier parts of Greater Boston. I remember the history curriculum being the exact opposite of this "patriotic history" stuff. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States was one of the texts on the reading list. It would have made a Trumpist stroke out if they read half the stuff we were taught.
The bottom line is that this "education program" can only be implemented after the election if Trump has a solid majority in the Senate and House. That would make federal funding contingent on standards of curriculum and so on. The real battle is in controlling school boards.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Sep 17th 2020 at 9:58:30 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."