dagmaraka wrote:teaching kids selected bits of history (by whom? certainly not by african americans and not by native americans...) leads to good citizens? who knew. I thought we wanted citizens who can think critically (which is very different from self-hating). i thought that was called propaganda, not history.
and, by the way, more and more nations are complexifying their history textbooks, adding the 'bad stuff' in; historians work with other historians across borders, bringing diverging historical narratives together... the goal for most of them is as much diversity,analysis, learning.... not selecting and preaching only what's comfortable or positive.
Since you are directing your post to me, I'll answer. (Perhaps, you should use the "quote" button, so you needn't have anyone wonder to whom you are directing a post?)
In the public schools I went to, we had Social Studies, which was a combination of American history, and civics. I believe one of the goals was to develop future good citizens. Meaning, we learned history, in context of the different Presidents, the way the branches of government work, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, all within the framework of the main historical events.
It was a priori (without question - there are other readers) that slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, prejudiced attitude towards some immigrants of other religions, was wrong; however, the reason behind the actions was explained in context of the thinking for that prior period in history. That is not propaganda (or rather "false propaganda").
If it was taught with the specific intent to proselytize that the United States was wrong in this way, or that way, that would be propaganda, since it would be promulgating a belief. That is not what public school was about. It was supposed to be like the old black and white detective show Dragnet, where Joe Friday would tell someone, "Just the facts, Ma'am!"
And again, it is inconsequential to me what the rest of the world is doing today relative to educating their respective youth. The United States is the United States. It is not the EU, nor any other country. Go around the country and you might find that fewer people care what is going on in Europe, or elsewhere, than in your neck-of-the-woods. Nothing is wrong with your perspective, I believe. I just don't believe there is any objective correctness to have the current world view on education. Some of us are just plain vanilla Americans, and we do not consider ourselves citizens of the world (not saying that is yourself, but I'm just pointing out the dichotomy with my provincial thinking).
Also, in the United States, education is what each state oversees. So, I can only talk for my education, in my state.
