"Inappropriate" history

Black men fought in large numbers in the revolution, and in integrated units--enough that Washington complained in his private correspondence about the numbers of negroes he was supplied by the state levies. In the American Civil War, more than 175,000 black men served in the USCT (United States Colored Troops) regiments. You don't get that in high school text books--at least you did not when i was a kid.

You get all these heroic stories of brave and hardy pioneers--like that low-life bullshit artist David Crockett--but they don't tell you how the women kept it all together while the men were away, and often for the rest of their lives when the great white hunter failed to come home. "Taming" the wilderness could not have been accomplished without them.

This is a problem throughout historiography. The farther you back in the past, the less likely it is that anyone but the wealthy and the powerful will appear in historical accounts. Much of history in the last couple of generations has been exciting as the lives of serfs in Europe of the middle ages, of the lives of slaves--whether 2000 years ago or 200 years ago--the lives of Chinese peasants have been uncovered and carefully researched. My personal favorite is all that manor court records tell us about how simple people in Europe lived a thousand years ago.

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@Lash,

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I'm thankful a wider historical truth is being taught now. Achievements from blacks and women against the odds they faced were heroic.

Great, but history is supposed to be the story of accomplishments, not the building of a myth. When we decided to repurpose history from teaching how this civilization was built to trying to make members who identify as a subgroup feel good about their subgroup we stopped teaching a critical skill to our youth. Is it any wonder that moderns whom are so incredibly ignorant of history as we are now also are wallowing in despair as our civilization dies rather then being energized by the building anew? I think not. He who is ignorant of history is lost as his way of life goes away, he has no tools for figuring out a new way. When history is not taught the brain has no seed of imagination on which to build the new civilization.

Refusing to teach history will have enormous negative ramifications over multiple generations. That kids come away from school thinking that women and blacks were heroic in victim-hood (even though in many cases they did not see themselves as victims,not that we care what they thought) does not fully compensate for the loss.

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It's hysterically ironic that you mention building myths. Think George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, Sam Houston, Robert E. Lee . . . you got a library full of myths right there.

What a clown. What a white male supremecist clown.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

It's hysterically ironic that you mention building myths. Think George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, Sam Houston, Robert E. Lee . . . you got a library full of myths right there

you have a library full of dead white guys who accomplished stuff. You also have a bunch of people that kids today will hardly ever hear about, because they are being taught that the black scullery maid was the heroic victim of white guys as she made their fried chicken dinners, with no evidence presented that she actually though of herself as a victim.

Sure,we used to build myth around some of the more colorful accomplished people in our past, but it was not the point of the exercise, it was rather a way to build interest in the learning of history. We flat out don't teach history anymore, supporting the myth of equality and the teaching of the abuser/victim dynamic between humans has become the point, the "history" class uses history has a stage for the attempt at indoctrination of the kids with values.

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@hawkeye10,

What do you allege that David Crockett accomplished, or Robert E. Lee? You're making **** up again.

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@hawkeye10,

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When we decided to repurpose history from teaching how this civilization was built to trying to make members who identify as a subgroup feel good about their subgroup we stopped teaching a critical skill to our youth.

That critical skill would be how to continue the propaganda stream without interruption, right, Hawk?

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He who is ignorant of history is lost as his way of life goes away, he has no tools for figuring out a new way. When history is not taught the brain has no seed of imagination on which to build the new civilization.

Americans are stunningly ignorant of much of their own history. There goes your theory right out the window.

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@JTT,

Quote:

Americans are stunningly ignorant of much of their own history. There goes your theory right out the window

My point is that we dont teach history anymore, thus Americans don't know history and are lost. You are agreeing with me.

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@hawkeye10,

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My point is that we dont teach history anymore,

History was never taught. Propaganda was disseminated.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
Americans are stunningly ignorant of much of their own history. There goes your theory right out the window
My point is that we dont teach history anymore, thus Americans don't know history and are lost. You are agreeing with me.

Its been a while since I 've been in a school; did thay stop teaching history ??

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Its been a while since I 've been in a school; did thay stop teaching history ??

it was already on the way out by the late 70's, as civics classes had been terminated and classes going under the heading of "history" were called in to take over , thus drastically reducing the time available in history class to teach history. "history" class was later called upon to push the values of multiculturalism and run the self esteem raising projects that American schools are known for, further reducing the time available to teach history. I'd say that history was last taught in any significant fashion around 1996, finished off by the move to high stakes standardized testing which concentrated on the three R's, no H's needed.

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There are dozens, probably hundreds, of slave narratives, hawkeye. Try reading a few. That's history, by those who were living it. They had a very acute sense of abuse and inhumanity and who was the abuser and who was the abused.

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@hawkeye10,

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A new survey of public high-school social-studies teachers done for the American Enterprise Institute indicates that they have gained a strong foothold in high schools.

Another sign of the indoctrination of this radical strain of multiculturalism was the finding that 37 percent of the history teachers believed it was "absolutely essential" that they teach their students "to be activists who challenge the status quo of our political system and seek to remedy injustices."

Not surprisingly, only a little more than one-third of the teachers deemed it "absolutely essential" for their students to "know facts" (such as the location of the fifty states) or dates (such as the attack on Pearl Harbor). After all, why let facts get in the way of advocacy?

While only about six in ten teachers thought it imperative for their students to (1) understand such concepts as federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances, and (2) know about the American Founding, the Civil War, and the Cold War, a whopping 76 percent deemed it critical for students "to be tolerant of people and groups who are different from themselves."

Given that feelings trump facts in so many classrooms, is it any wonder that there has been such a precipitous decline in Americans' knowledge of their own country's history?

While ideological indoctrination is a major concern, perhaps an even bigger one is the lack of academic preparation of prospective K-12 history teachers. Numerous studies have found that tiny minorities of history teachers have majored in the subject, and many have taken little more than a few survey courses.

A basic problem is that history commonly is fitted under the umbrella of social studies, a mishmash of everything from global studies to sociology. State certification requirements equate "social studies education" with knowledge of history, when in fact a would-be teacher may not even have studied any history, or may have very little formal preparation in the subject

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/do_american_history_teachers_v.html

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Oh . . . the American Enterprise Institute . . . now there's an unbiased source. (insert rolly-eyed emoticon here)

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Seems to me it's pretty important that kids learn what people in Iran, and China, and the European Union think and do and why ("global studies"), considering that's the world we live in, and they supply most of our goods and are just a few hours away from us, and how societies work ("sociology"), since we've lived exclusively in them for the last five millenia. Of course the American Enterprise Institute can View With Alarm just about anything about the world people actually live in today.

It might be interesting too to see about the statistics for teachers of various grades. I'm just not convinced that teaching about federalism is going to mean very much to a first grader, for example, nor would I expect a first grade teacher to think it was a vital subject for his/her kids. In fact even bringing it into the survey says something about the ideological biases of the people conducting it.

And decades later I still regard it as pretty much useless to have spent so much time learning the state capitols. So much for factoids and dateoids.

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@boomerang,

hello i am jane by name i will like to know about you....

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@boomerang,

boomer, what do u think of Mo 's education in American history ??

Does he remember accurate time-lines of major events, the correct sequence of major wars
(Revolutionary War 1774-1783, Civil War 1861-65, First World War 1914 until 11a.m. 11/11/1918,
Second World War 1939-45, Third World War 1945 to Christmas Eve 1991
[including Korean War & Viet Nam etc.] a/k/a "The Cold War") ???

I left out the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War, for ease and brevity.

If I may offer a personal opinion:
I bet that his uncle, the Lieutenant General, woud be especially proud of Mo,
if Mo read the US Constitution (or had it read TO him), since the General swore to support it.
I was 9, when I accidentally found it in the back of a history book in school.
Its short and not hard to understand.

U coud spend some soft, warm personal time with Mo,
explaining that this is the organization and distribution of power in America: the Supreme Law of the Land.

(Don 't forget the 2nd Amendment.)

Speaking from personal knowledge, I assure u that Mo will be able to impress the hell out of people,
if he can remember parts of the Constitution, and know government works, in his youth. That works.
It blows their minds.

David

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@jennifa,

jennifa wrote:

hello i am jane by name i will like to know about you....

WELCOME to the forum, Jane.
May your posting time be FILLED WITH DELITE (or better).

David

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

And decades later I still regard it as pretty much useless to have spent so much time learning the state capitols.

So much for factoids and dateoids.

In my schools, in NY, Arizona and California: we did not study the state capitals,
but dates count for a lot; what happened first and what happened in consequence.

David

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@jennifa,

jennifa wrote:

hello i am jane by name i will like to know about you....

If u wanna know about us,
then u might click on our screenames or our avatars for personal profiles.
(Maybe fill one out for yourself.)

David

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Dates aren't necessarily all that important. They only become crucial to an understanding of events as they impinge on others, and so precision about dates only begins to matter as one approaches what is considered the "modern age." (Roughly, that's after 1500. One can allege that it begins somewhat earlier than that, but it's useful to understand that that term refers to the history of Europe, and by extension, the Americas.)

So, for example, at the time of the foundation of Rome (alleged to have occured in the spring of 754 BCE), the Romans were unaware of the existence of China in anything more than a very vague and uncertain way. At the same time, the Chinese were unaware of the world of the ancient Mediterranean civilizations. So it doesn't matter if the Chinese had already invented the crossbow, Europeans would have to invent it for themselves. It also wouldn't matter to the Chinese that water clocks had been invented in Europe--they would have to invent that for themselves.

Dates only become crucially important in understanding events occuring within relatively short periods of time in an era of rapid communications.

1 Reply

"Inappropriate" history

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