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Volkerball posted:They can stop calling John Brown insane any time for starters. 
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Dec 23, 2013 07:39
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Volkerball posted:I hated the Cold War. There's nothing positive in any of it. Everyone was terrible. I agree more time should be spent on it, particularly going back into World War I with the American invasion of Russia and Haiti, but I'd rather see students focusing on learning about people and groups who did things right rather than just "Hey, check out this awful shitshow." Isn't that the definition of white washing?
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Dec 23, 2013 07:50
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Volkerball posted:I hated the Cold War. There's nothing positive in any of it. Everyone was terrible. I agree more time should be spent on it, particularly going back into World War I with the American invasion of Russia and Haiti, but I'd rather see students focusing on learning about people and groups who did things right rather than just "Hey, check out this awful shitshow." It not turning into a hot war and the Civil Rights movement happening despite the FBI trying its damnedest to suppress are both good things, right?
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Dec 23, 2013 07:51
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Ardennes posted:Isn't that the definition of white washing? I just don't think it should be a pillar of how American history should be taught. White-washing to me would be framing McCarthyism and the red scare as these unavoidable conflicts that the US did its best to navigate, and portraying interventions for geopolitical purposes as the right course of action at the time. Like it was an inevitable escalation of force on the great American march to progress. Teach it for what it was: a race to the bottom between two militaristic regimes, with a lot of negative consequences and nothing good. It's a great lesson in what lovely governments and narratives look like, but as I said, I didn't draw much from it that I would say helped me become a better man. Rand alPaul posted:It not turning into a hot war and the Civil Rights movement happening despite the FBI trying its damnedest to suppress are both good things, right? It shouldn't have even been a cold war, so it's not like getting some dumb luck that saved the world from being destroyed is a huge consolation prize. How would you tie the Civil Rights movement to the Cold War aside from sharing the same time period?
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Dec 23, 2013 08:04
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Volkerball posted:I just don't think it should be a pillar of how American history should be taught. White-washing to me would be framing McCarthyism and the red scare as these unavoidable conflicts that the US did its best to navigate, and portraying interventions for geopolitical purposes as the right course of action at the time. Like it was an inevitable escalation of force on the great American march to progress. Teach it for what it was: a race to the bottom between two militaristic regimes, with a lot of negative consequences and nothing good. It's a great lesson in what lovely governments and narratives look like, but as I said, I didn't draw much from it that I would say helped me become a better man. You don't think developing a health degree of cynicism or at least skepticism makes you a better person? If anything we learn far more from the darker corners of history and that isn't a bad thing.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:10
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Ardennes posted:You don't think developing a health degree of cynicism or at least skepticism makes you a better person? If anything we learn far more from the darker corners of history and that isn't a bad thing. Cynicism, absolutely not. Of course, skepticism is important, and I advocated adding things like the invasion of Russia to show that the US went decades hyping up fear over an enemy that they played a tremendous role in creating to enhance that, but when it comes to high school kids, I'd prefer a focus on things where morality played a part, and inspirational people contributed, to show kids that positive things can be accomplished. If they're like any of us, they'll be plenty jaded just experiencing life. No sense drowning them in failure in history class as well.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:23
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Volkerball posted:Cynicism, absolutely not. Of course, skepticism is important, and I advocated adding things like the invasion of Russia to show that the US went decades hyping up fear over an enemy that they played a tremendous role in creating to enhance that, but when it comes to high school kids, I'd prefer a focus on things where morality played a part, and inspirational people contributed, to show kids that positive things can be accomplished. If they're like any of us, they'll be plenty jaded just experiencing life. No sense drowning them in failure in history class as well. Maybe it is the right time to prepare them for the journey ahead rather than sugarcoating what is actually going on. There seems to be a trend that for maybe young Americans their "eyes are opened" only in their early-mid 20s when they experience the real world. It seems like it might be a good time to move that up a bit. (I assume we are talking about high school students.)
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Dec 23, 2013 08:27
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Ardennes posted:You don't think developing a health degree of cynicism or at least skepticism makes you a better person? If anything we learn far more from the darker corners of history and that isn't a bad thing. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 08:33
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Ardennes posted:Maybe it is the right time to prepare them for the journey ahead rather than sugarcoating what is actually going on. There seems to be a trend that for maybe young Americans their "eyes are opened" only in their early-mid 20s when they experience the real world. It seems like it might be a good time to move that up a bit. We are. I guess it really comes down to a macro level for each individual student. Some might need an emphasis on positive stories to use as inspiration down the road ahead, some might need an emphasis on how lovely earth is so they get used to being the road. But generally, I don't think it's a good idea for a country to put a huge emphasis on filling its children, its future, with negativity and doubt.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:35
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Negative Entropy posted:By the time students are learning about the Cold War, they should have already grown cynical and skeptical from learning about the elitist nature of the Founding Fathers, native american genocide and broken treaties, the Gilded Age and the rise of American imperialism, and the two-facedness of Wilson and Truman towards labor. The deception and imperialism of the Cold War just drives home points that should have been apparent already. Looking at the big picture of American history best brings out a rudimentary sense of class consciousness. You need the Cold War to put it together and connect that history of racism and classism to the events of the late 20th century into the 21st. If you don't know about the Cold War, then what is going down in Ukraine at this moment is a fog. If anything the Cold War is when American history in a far more full sense becomes interconnected to world history.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:37
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Ardennes posted:If you don't know about the Cold War, then what is going down in Ukraine at this moment is a fog. We have this John McCain for that. 
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Dec 23, 2013 08:41
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Ardennes posted:You need the Cold War to put it together and connect that history of racism and classism to the events of the late 20th century into the 21st. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 08:52
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I think the problem is that the material is limited to things America directly had a part in. You're not studying the Cold War, you're studying the American side of the Cold War, which to be honest is a lot less interesting. The same applies to most things, really. I don't really see any way to fix that besides requiring more history classes.
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Dec 23, 2013 13:06
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Well if it's an American History class, obviously they're going to focus on our part in the Cold War. Our APUSH teacher taught us all about the ins and outs of the Cold War pretty fairly. Taught containment theory and at the end asked the class if we agreed with that assessment. No one did, but that might have also had to do with the fact that we were shown Errol Morris's "Fog of War".
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Dec 23, 2013 15:07
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Marlows posted:Above all else, the Philippines must not be mistaken to have a nationalist identity during this period; many hated the US occupation, but others celebrated it. The study of colonial and imperial conflicts is made difficult by false assumptions of national identity or resistance among the oppressed. Would you mind elaborating on this? Everything I've ever been taught tells me that Filipinos were seeking independence from Spain for decades (at the very least, at least a year) before the Americans ever entered the picture, and that Filipinos resisted the American occupation precisely because they had mostly thrown out the Spanish from the Philippines already but then the Treaty of Paris handed over the Philippines to the Americans anyway. Full disclosure: I myself am Filipino, so I'm genuinely curious as to how you'd describe the Philippine national identity from the outside looking in.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:Would you mind elaborating on this? Everything I've ever been taught tells me that Filipinos were seeking independence from Spain for decades (at the very least, at least a year) before the Americans ever entered the picture, and that Filipinos resisted the American occupation precisely because they had mostly thrown out the Spanish from the Philippines already but then the Treaty of Paris handed over the Philippines to the Americans anyway. My class didn't really cover the Philippines in much detail except as being part of the Spanish-American war spoils, but what I remember is that there was a resistance movement which went on for a while so Congress agreed to release it (I think they mentioned the Jones Law specifically), but also there was enough local cooperation that some government structure was developed while it was still under US control.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:58
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Krispy Kareem posted:The South was definitely drinking it's own Kool-Aid, but at the end of the day war was the only option. Slaves were the largest source of wealth in the country. Bigger than the railroads or industry. Freeing them voluntarily would be like everyone burning their house deeds today. There was no scenario where this was going to end peacefully. As Ron Paul is happy to point out there were plenty of societies that ended slavery relatively peacefully, I don't necessarily think it would have worked out better for the 1/3rd of Southerners held in bondage if their masters had been a little less delusional and greedy but there were certainly different ways for the story to end. If the Southern leadership had not collectively lost their poo poo at the curtailing of their dreams of expanding slavery into western territory (that geographically could never have supported a slave economy in the first place), their slave plantations would have lumbered on for decades. The Federal government never had and likely never would directly interfere in slavery in the states where it existed, certainly such a program was far beyond the ambition of Lincoln or the Republicans of 1860. The supreme irony of the South's belligerent defence of slavery is that this was the only thing that could have brought about the near term abolition of slavery.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:24
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One of the problems with the Cold War is there isn't much space for making America look good. It was a non-stop Red Scare, McCarthyism was rampant, and the primary reason America went to the moon was to stick it to the Reds. No support for progress and innovation just "gently caress you Russia, we're going there first." It was an era where merely being accused of being a communist was going to brand you an outcast for life. It's a major problem of how American history is taught, especially in high schools. There is this desire to make the U.S. look like the good guy, always, forever. There is a lot of stuff that's glossed over or just flat out not mentioned because it makes America look bad.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:
Do other countries teach their history significantly differently? I mean yeah there's  but that's the exception rather than the rule (eg, look at Turkey and Armenia).
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Dec 23, 2013 18:55
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Toxicslurpee posted:It's a major problem of how American history is taught, especially in high schools. There is this desire to make the U.S. look like the good guy, always, forever. There is a lot of stuff that's glossed over or just flat out not mentioned because it makes America look bad. Negative Entropy posted:By the time students are learning about the Cold War, they should have already grown cynical and skeptical from learning about the elitist nature of the Founding Fathers, native american genocide and broken treaties, the Gilded Age and the rise of American imperialism, and the two-facedness of Wilson and Truman towards labor. The deception and imperialism of the Cold War just drives home points that should have been apparent already. Looking at the big picture of American history best brings out a rudimentary sense of class consciousness. When the student sees something like the overthrow of democratic leaders who had even a sniff of communism during the Cold War they should be reminded of how reminiscent it is of guys like Madero who got overthrown by the US for socialist-leaning policies before the USSR was even a thing. Since the conversation in this thread is turning to "how we should teach American history in U.S. public school", I'm curious here. I know we have several teachers here in DnD, but how many folks participating in this conversation have teaching backgrounds and/or have worked with students from ages 12-18 before? This quote in particular seems really out of whack with the reality of most classrooms, and what most students are capable of. I admit, my teaching experience is just beginning (Been on the job for half a year now), and I'm still a long ways off from figuring out the best way to present new information to students in a way they'll best learn it, but talking about the majority of students understanding "two-faced or multiple layers" on a single subject seems like a tall order, even for high schoolers.
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Dec 23, 2013 21:07
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I had an US History teacher in HS who would say that when they let him teach the class his way then he would start in the present day and work backwards from there.
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Dec 23, 2013 23:01
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BrotherAdso posted:2) Most high schools teach only one year of American history. Teach two years of history, one for 1609-1876, one for 1876-2002. I would prefer this be 1763 - 1898 and 1898-2002 personally, but most people wouldn't let us get away with skipping the colonial era. This would be nice, but is impractical. Most schools need to have a World History, and American History, and an American Government and Civics, and one year of flex room for students who fail or need a remedial year. There's no room for an extra year of required history. Yeah, especially these days as school budgets have been squeezed, there's even less room for that now. I wouldn't be surprised if the very concept of elective courses in high school is phased out entirely in the next couple of decades.
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Dec 23, 2013 23:21
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Yeah, especially these days as school budgets have been squeezed, there's even less room for that now. I wouldn't be surprised if the very concept of elective courses in high school is phased out entirely in the next couple of decades. History classes aren't electives, at least not at any of the school districts I've seen; they're one of the core classes along with math, science, and english. You're also not getting rid of AP level classes because people who take those come from rich families and will make a stink if they don't have them.
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Dec 23, 2013 23:45
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Look, as a former educator, all I know is that very few people need to know a blow-by-blow account of the Battle of Concord and almost every account of Valley Forge is hagiographic fluff. Unless you're in a college-level course on 18th century America both these events can be covered in an hour and there's no value in testing students' knowledge about them, yet every year a solid month is spent on that stuff alone. Then 1945-1993 (where most things are left off) is covered in about 8 days before summer break. Also it would be nice if history wasn't one of those classes reserved for coaches. I can't even imagine how an actual historian feels about the state of history education in the US.
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Dec 24, 2013 00:22
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Sharkie posted:Look, as a former educator, all I know is that very few people need to know a blow-by-blow account of the Battle of Concord and almost every account of Valley Forge is hagiographic fluff. Unless you're in a college-level course on 18th century America both these events can be covered in an hour and there's no value in testing students' knowledge about them, yet every year a solid month is spent on that stuff alone. At high level High school/low level college classes you don't see this at all. In fact, once we got to the end of Buchanan's administration, it was literally "and then the war happened, and during the war the trans-continental railroad was approved along with the Land Grants Acts, and next week we'll start Reconstruction".
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Dec 24, 2013 00:33
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Eh, it's what I got in high school, then was depressed to see kids getting when I was on the other side of the desk many years later. Though to be fair these weren't "high level" classes, just the standard year of American History that was a requisite course in my state. And to be fair I really wouldn't know what's standard in college-level courses as my school thought in-depth knowledge of Peisistratus was far more crucial.
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Dec 24, 2013 01:02
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DynamicSloth posted:As Ron Paul is happy to point out there were plenty of societies that ended slavery relatively peacefully, I don't necessarily think it would have worked out better for the 1/3rd of Southerners held in bondage if their masters had been a little less delusional and greedy but there were certainly different ways for the story to end. If the Southern leadership had not collectively lost their poo poo at the curtailing of their dreams of expanding slavery into western territory (that geographically could never have supported a slave economy in the first place), their slave plantations would have lumbered on for decades. The Federal government never had and likely never would directly interfere in slavery in the states where it existed, certainly such a program was far beyond the ambition of Lincoln or the Republicans of 1860. I'm not sure if how other societies solved their slavery woes can really apply to the United States. That odd combination of good intentions and racism just made us unique snowflakes. I haven't found much on the subject, but I question whether the slave importation ban hurt or helped black freedom. While it may have restricted slave populations, it also artificially raised individial slave value and put a stronger emphasis on homegrown breeding. The higher cost per slave meant it was that much harder to quit. So we ended up with something of a slave bubble.
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Dec 24, 2013 01:57
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I remember the columnist Dave Barry describing what it was like growing up in the early 1960's. He said that school history classes were "a yearly cycle beginning with the Sumerians and ending inexorably with Harry Truman and the atomic bomb". All I could think is, that sounds wayyy too familiar decades later.
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Dec 24, 2013 04:15
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Just want to say that I went to high school in the 90's and we literally spent an entire week on a project that was about nothing but finding reasons communism was bad. We were't supposed to study or understand communism or anything about the USSR other than that they were communists. We just had to spend a week learning about how bad communism was and then everybody did presentations about all the reasons we found that made communism bad. I had another history teacher say that America has never lost a war and never will lose a war and oh by the way, Vietnam doesn't count because it wasn't actually a war, it was a conflict, and communism didn't consume the world so obviously that means everybody was afraid of the U.S. after Vietnam and that's a win.
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Dec 24, 2013 06:13
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My youngest brother is 14 and is in the middle of a project explaining that the war of 1812 was born out of GB/FR/US dueling trade embargoes and later violations of US neutrality by press gangs, with specific acts being cited and all, so maybe there's hope. It's a am hist course so Sumerians are right out.
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Dec 24, 2013 07:17
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Krispy Kareem posted:I'm not sure if how other societies solved their slavery woes can really apply to the United States. That odd combination of good intentions and racism just made us unique snowflakes. Counterfactuals are pretty useless and the "was x inevtiable" counterfactuals doubly so since every event that ever happened was inevitable all other things being equal, what I'd take issue with is any notion that the South's actions leading up to the war represented anything close to a rational economic response. Plantation slavery was immensely profitable thanks to the cotton boom, all the leading Southerners could have died fat rich (horribly evil) men if they'd wanted to. Maybe American Slavery was doomed to a violent end but there's no reason to believe it had to be in 1860 but for the fact that Southern defence of slavery had passed all bounds of rationality long before they got to that point. Krispy Kareem posted:I haven't found much on the subject, but I question whether the slave importation ban hurt or helped black freedom. While it may have restricted slave populations, it also artificially raised individial slave value and put a stronger emphasis on homegrown breeding. The higher cost per slave meant it was that much harder to quit. So we ended up with something of a slave bubble.
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Dec 24, 2013 09:22
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Since the conversation in this thread is turning to "how we should teach American history in U.S. public school", I'm curious here. I know we have several teachers here in DnD, but how many folks participating in this conversation have teaching backgrounds and/or have worked with students from ages 12-18 before? This quote in particular seems really out of whack with the reality of most classrooms, and what most students are capable of. I admit, my teaching experience is just beginning (Been on the job for half a year now), and I'm still a long ways off from figuring out the best way to present new information to students in a way they'll best learn it, but talking about the majority of students understanding "two-faced or multiple layers" on a single subject seems like a tall order, even for high schoolers. I am a high school teacher in my third full year of licensed teaching, with two years of seat-of-my pants teaching in China and two years ish of community college adjuncting and subbing at high schools. Understanding multiple layers is not a difficult concept for high schoolers, especially in history. Simulation, role-playing, and small group work asking each student to evaluate a perspective and present it to their group can work well to help students understand the variety of influences on a historical event. Krispy Kareem posted:I haven't found much on the subject, but I question whether the slave importation ban hurt or helped black freedom. While it may have restricted slave populations, it also artificially raised individial slave value and put a stronger emphasis on homegrown breeding. The higher cost per slave meant it was that much harder to quit. So we ended up with something of a slave bubble. Banning importation was definitely a good. Slave communities were stronger without disruption by non-English speakers, and stronger slave communities are more able to create and coordinate mutual aid and resistance. In addition, the rising price of slaves was only marginally a function of demand not meeting supply - slave supplies were relatively healthy because of the ability of the slavers to breed and sell slaves at a rapid clip. Ultimately, though, the important ban was important for two more prominent reasons. First, it represented the first (small) victory of the anti-slave forces against the slavers in legislation, marking an important step in which the United States acknowledged in its laws that the kind of abuses slave traders entailed were not allowable. This bolstered arguments that slavery as a larger institution might be tainted. Second, the slave trade itself was just a horrendous evil. Its end was an unalloyed good even if some of its downstream consequences (like playing a role in the rise of the price of slaves) are harder to judge.
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Dec 24, 2013 15:27
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This lecture posted by C-SPAN a couple of months ago was the first time I had ever even heard of the "Old Republicans," and it was certainly the first time I got anything resembling a good idea of the American political landscape following the War of 1812. Given how well-trodden most ground in American history is, I found it really interesting. Any thoughts on the accuracy or quality of the lecture? Fun fact: About 32 minutes in, the professor asks a girl in the front row a question. It turns out that it's former Congressman Todd Akin's daughter. No, really, the "legitimate rape" guy.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:04
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In my middle east history clad in college most of the students had heard of Iran-Contra but didn't have more than a vague idea of what had happened. We were all pretty shocked that the scandal hadn't done more damage to the administration once we heard about the extent of the scandal. Can anyone explain to me why American discourse isn't talking about The Crimes of Reagan after that shitshow went into the history books? How did he get away with that?
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Dec 25, 2013 10:21
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Before he became the creepfeast anti-tax crusader C-SPAN viewers all know and love, Grover Norquist made his bones as the founder of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project in the mid-90s. In the 80s specifically it's because Reagan was seen as a slightly doddering lame duck by the time the hearings began, and most of the blame seemed to rest on Ollie North and to a lesser extent Caspar Weinberger. Alec Bald Snatch fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 10:36
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Also Lee Atwater and Rove were able to build Republicans a solid base with very nasty politics from the Reagan era into the Bush's. That had a tremendous effect on how the majority of the country viewed Reagan, and the winners kind of wrote history. They really wrote the narrative.
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Dec 25, 2013 11:11
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Arglebargle III posted:Can anyone explain to me why American discourse isn't talking about The Crimes of Reagan after that shitshow went into the history books? How did he get away with that? Part of it was his elimination of the Fairness Doctrine - without that, neither Fox nor AM talk radio could never have become the partisan institutions they have became. So much of the country was focused on the Cold War and that since Iran-Contra had nothing to do with Commies, it was small chump change. Once the Soviet Union collapsed and the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was retroactively canonized into Saint Ronnie The Slayer Of Communism™. Bush pardoning several of the major players before they went to trial basically let the justice department know who was boss and for DoJ to shut up and get to the back of the bus.  http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-pardon.html Caspar Weinberger was a compulsive note-taker. He had 6 notebooks full of handwritten notes of meetings with Reagan, Bush and North detailing the illegal trade in weapons with Iran and the illegal private war with Nicaragua. Both Bush and Reagan claimed to be "out of the loop" while the handwritten notes showed those claims to be lies. People are visual creatures. The folks who listened to the Oliver North hearings on radio, or read about it in newspapers, thought the guy was a crook who should be hanged from a streetlight. People who saw him on television were overwhelmed by his uniform, gestures and body language. People who saw only the televised hearings thought that the folks in Congress should stop harassing that fine patriot and perhaps themselves be hanged from a streetlight. That people are visual is why there is so much effort in controlling what gets shown on TV in every country.
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Dec 25, 2013 22:05
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Arglebargle III posted:In my middle east history clad in college most of the students had heard of Iran-Contra but didn't have more than a vague idea of what had happened. We were all pretty shocked that the scandal hadn't done more damage to the administration once we heard about the extent of the scandal. Can anyone explain to me why American discourse isn't talking about The Crimes of Reagan after that shitshow went into the history books? How did he get away with that? As far as I can tell with talking to some older people who voted for him back in the 80s it boils down to, he made us feel good about being Americans again cause we (young people) weren't there in the 70 and there was a malaise and Carter just wanted you to wear sweaters, and something about should have used military force to get the hostages, (and my favorite bit when pointing out Iran Contra is a case of the President actually committing treason against the United States)) well that's just the price of Empire. Also our generation is a bunch of lazy kids that just want a handout and that they government didn't want to cap executive pay since they get a lot of tax money out of them. These are the attitudes in play and I hold them for being the reason this country is so rear end backwards
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Dec 26, 2013 00:12
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And then there's people who think the plain facts of Iran-Contra are an exaggeration by the liberal media if not a straight-up conspiracy theory.
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Dec 26, 2013 00:15
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Huttan posted:Part of it was his elimination of the Fairness Doctrine - without that, neither Fox nor AM talk radio could never have become the partisan institutions they have became.
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Dec 26, 2013 00:44
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