zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year. Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly skewed caricature of history that leaves out certain "inconvenient truths." This is also an overcorrection.

>>stcred+Zp
Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?

>>onepla+Gu
Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium.

>>monoca+jv
That's not the opposite of what I wrote above. That's merely another kind of overcorrection!

>>stcred+vv
I'm seeing a much more nuanced and complete understanding of history out of children these days than what was taught to me is my point, in contrast to what you're saying.

Can you give some specific examples?

>>monoca+9x
Not the parent but I can see where you're both coming from. I think there's a lot more in depth look at US history, specifically the warts, than when I was a kid but I also think there's a lot less pre-US American history where the focus would be on _why_ the founding fathers were (partially) great men.

That seems like an over correction to me and I think that it shows in the push to tear down monuments of great people in American history who were largely products of their time.

For example, it's hard to overstate how important it was that George Washington gave up the presidency. He set the stage for the peaceful transition of power in the US and even the world. But he also was a rich guy who owned slaves.

It's not nuance that's missing, it's the concept of duality.

>>parine+XB
What makes you think they're not being taught that still?

>>monoca+VF
I hope they are, but yet some large number of people who want to post stuff online are promulgating a ridiculous one-sided view. That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery, and thus all of that wealth should be given over.

The fact that this sort of dreck isn't widely debunked and ridiculed whenever it appears is kind of mind boggling. Yes, some very bad things happened. But by the same token, the founding fathers weren't B-movie villains doing bad things for the evulz!

>>stcred+pX
> That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery

I mean, all of that is true.

Nobody thinks that the founding fathers were B movie villains, only that they were overwhelmingly a set of people looking to maintain and increase their power leveraging their ability to own people like cattle, and steal land from the people who were already here as an economic concentrate and multiplier.

Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be.

I'd recommend An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard as a introduction into how the constitution was designed to reinforce the power structures holding up the people who wrote it.

>>monoca+K51
I mean, all of that is true.

For the US as a whole? No way! If it were true, the economic might of the South would have overwhelmed the North. The opposite was true. Slavery held the South back, economically. You've been fed some propaganda lies, there!

You can't even get slaves to reliably do high value-add work which requires attention to detail, even on pain of death. It turns out that to do this sustainably, you pay them bomuses. This was especially the case in the US South. Certainly the Germans found this out as well, in the 1940's. (Through failure, in that case.)

(Skeptical? Read yourself some books by distinguished African American economist Thomas Sowell, then get back to me. He used to be a Marxist, then became disillusioned and started debunking their lies and deceptions. Think about it, if slavery were some miraculous universal engine of productivity, wouldn't startups be doing it?)

Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be.

Sure. However, throwing out certain principles which make our society great will hold us back and throw us further backwards as well. Instead of being told the truth about how civics really works in the US, students are being propagandized against this.