Killing History

 

Patrick HenryI have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. — Patrick Henry, 1775

Nearly twenty years ago, Australian historian Keith Windschuttle wrote a scathing indictment of contemporary historiography. He attacked the prevailing post-modern analysis as little more than “Parisian labels and designer concepts.” The book, Killing History, established the basic argument against history written in a way that was divorced from empirical evidence and a sense of universal standards.

This is how we’ve come to understand the history wars: the destruction of the past through the use of distorted evidence and the rendering of Western history as the bigoted story of small pox blankets and war-time internments. While framed as a fight against the biases of traditional history writing, the post-modern approach commits its own sins while attacking those of its enemies. The world of the po-mo historian is a world in which only white Europeans have agency, while the remainder of mankind is made up of hild-like victims of European greed and lust.

Subversion is one way to fight a culture war. Another, arguably more effective way over the long run is ignorance. Shortly after Windschuttle published Killing History, the eminent Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein wrote Who Killed Canadian History? Whereas the former work raised the hue and cry about political correctness, the latter pointed to another more insidious danger:

Who, in particular, is responsible for this decimation of our history?

  • The provincial ministries of education for preaching and practising parochial regionalism and for gutting their curricula of content.
  • The ministry of bureaucrats who have pressed the “whole child” approach and anti-élitist education.
  • The ethnic communities that have been conned by Canada’s multiculturalism policy into demanding an offence-free education for all Canadian children, so that the idea that Canada has a past and a culture has been all but lost.
  • The boards of education that have responded to pressures for political correctness by denuding their curricula of serious knowledge and offering only trendy pap.
  • The media that has looked only for scandal and for a new approach to the past, so that fact becomes half truth and feeds only cynicism.
  • The university professors who have waged internecine wars to such an extent that they have virtually destroyed history, and especially Canadian history, as a serious discipline.
  • The university presses and the agencies that subsidize professors for publishing unreadable books on miniscule subjects.
  • The federal governments that have been afraid to reach over provincial governments and the school boards to give Canadians what they want and need: a sense that they live in a nation with a glorious past and a great future.

What was said about Canadian history nearly a generation ago will soon be said about American history. Don’t believe me? Here’s a story from the American Heartland:

North Dakota students may or may not learn about the first 100 years of America’s history.

Important topics like the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War and the framing of the U.S. Constitution may [continue to be] simply be ignored by teachers under new history standards approved by the state’s board of education last Monday, the Argus Leader reports.

Current standards [i.e., those being replaced] do not allow history teachers to delve into topics before the Civil War, so the new standards open up the door but don’t require teachers to cover early American history, as many would have preferred. The recently adopted history standards are set to take effect in 2016-17 school year and whittle the current standards from 117 pages to 44.

If a math teacher was to suggest teaching calculus before algebra he’d be considered incompetent. Teaching the Civil War without explaining the Founding Era is every bit as absurd. Even if such a history was taught without overt bias, it would still serve to completely undermine the student’s understanding of the past.

Teaching history as a series of disconnected facts serves two purposes: It kills the child’s interest in the subject by turning it into a very boring version of Trivial Pursuit and it insures that he will remember the facts but not the context. It’s that last element that’s vital in the culture wars.

Take slavery, the granddaddy of all dark moments in American history. Let’s say you teach the history of slavery but only with reference to American history, ignoring what happened in other times and places. You spend a great deal of time on the experiences of individual slaves, the conditions on southern plantations, and the economic importance of slavery to the overall economy. The work of the abolitionists, the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Civil War are glossed over.

The impression left is of a terrible evil that is at the heart and soul of American history. There must be something genuinely dreadful about a country that would tolerate such evil for so long. How hollow and cynical do the words of the Declaration of Independence ring then? Note that no outright lies have been told with this approach, yet the context has been repeatedly dropped.

Now imagine teaching the history of slavery in its full context. That slavery and other forms of coerced labor have been an accepted part of countless human societies down the ages. That, until the time of the Founding – a few theologians and philosophers notwithstanding – no one much cared about the moral questions raised by slavery. That the Founding Fathers struggled greatly with the moral and political consequences of the “peculiar institution.” That no other nation on earth had the moral courage to fight and win a great war on the issue of slavery.

Both approaches are “correct” in the sense that the facts are historically validated. The first approach, however, leads the student to conclude that America is evil. The second approach that America is basically good, though with a checkered moral history. If your goal is to raise a generation eager to blast away at the foundations of the American Republic, the choice of approaches is very obvious.

 

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  1. Fake John Galt Coolidge
    Fake John Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    The winners write history. Our side did not win. It is just that simple.

    • #1
  2. American Abroad Thatcher
    American Abroad
    @AmericanAbroad

    It is a great pity to see how debased history education has become.  Many schools eschew teaching history altogether and opt for the odious social studies.

    This allows them to freely teach completely out-of-context units like Slavery, Inequality, the Environment, and Conflict.  This is intentional, of course, because putting things in historical context gets in the way of indoctrinating young minds.

    It is awfully difficult to create a generation of young social justice warriors if we actually had to learn about the amazing benefits of capitalism or the principles upon which America was founded.

    • #2
  3. Mama Toad Member
    Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    I’m teaching American history this year, to high schoolers in one course, and to a fourth-grader in another. Here’s some of my reading list for the fourth grader:

    Life in a Longhouse Village by Bobbie Kalman

    The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh

    Young Ben Franklin by Santry

    If You Lived at the Time series

    Phoebe the Spy by Judith Griffin

    Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman by Marguerite Henry

    The high schoolers’ course will be equally fun and informative.

    Free your students from the progressive tyranny! School them yourself!

    • #3
  4. Mama Toad Member
    Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    American Abroad: It is a great pity to see how debased history education has become.  Many schools eschew teaching history altogether and opt for the odious social studies.

    You said it, brother!

    I homeschool and I never ever teach social studies. I teach history, geography, anthropology, politics, etc. but I don’t teach “social studies.”

    • #4
  5. Tom Meyer, Ed. Member
    Tom Meyer, Ed.
    @tommeyer

    Richard Anderson: Nearly twenty years ago the Australian historian Keith Windschuttle wrote a scathing indictment of contemporary historiography.

    Been on my too-read shelf for a long time. Perhaps I should get to it.

    • #5
  6. Michael Sanregret Inactive
    Michael Sanregret
    @TheQuestion

    We are told that the United States, which fought a war to end slavery, has to be held responsible for the sin of slavery.  We are not told that the Democratic Party, which defended slavery until it no longer could be defended, has to be held responsible.  How do we let them do this?

    • #6
  7. Tim H. Inactive
    Tim H.
    @TimH

    This sort of thing always surprises me, because history has always been one of my favorite subjects, and I’d never been taught under this approach.  I reckon I had good teachers.  I don’t really know what professional historians write like.

    Then again, I do look through the history section in the bookstore, and I see plenty of titles that look like they have a radical motive and I just skip over them.  I like to learn what happened and when, not to be given a pseudo-moral judgement about the characters.

    • #7
  8. Mama Toad Member
    Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    Michael Sanregret:We are told that the United States, which fought a war to end slavery, has to be held responsible for the sin of slavery. We are not told that the Democratic Party, which defended slavery until it no longer could be defended, has to be held responsible. How do we let them do this?

    We abandon our students to the school boards and progressive educators.

    If we fight back and educate our own, we will change the world. I truly believe this.

    • #8
  9. Matty Van Inactive
    Matty Van
    @MattyVan

    One of my favorite historians, David Hackett Fischer, sometimes writes about writing history. In the intro to his excellent biography “Champlain’s Dream,” which (naturally) deals extensively with both Europeans and North American Indians, he talks a bit about how the previous two generations of historians dealt with the two groups, and his hopes for the current generation:

    “Two generations ago, historians wrote of European saints and Indian savages. In the last generation, too many scholars have been writing about Indian saints and European savages. The opportunithy for our generation is to go beyond the calculus of saints and savages altogether, and write about both American Indians and Europeans with maturity, empathy, and understanding.”

    I wonder how many current historians have been able to go beyond the calculus of saints and savages, and not just in relation to Indians but in relation to all “oppressed” groups.

    • #9
  10. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    I’m just rereading Windschuttle’s book so your post is timely.  The most telling quote I’ve run across about what we are up against is from John Gillis, professor emeritus of history at Rutgers:

    “Memory has no existence beyond our politics, our social relations, and our histories.  We have no alternative but to construct new memories as well as new identities better suited to the complexities of a post-national era.”

    The study of how events are remembered has a long, storied and valuable historical tradition but what more and more academic historians are on is a mission to reconstruct our memories to accord with their ideological preferences which explains much of what is happening with the teaching of American history.  Most of my children’s college history courses were indoctrination rather than designed to be intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking.  Thankfully they were science majors.

    • #10
  11. Brandon Phelps Member
    Brandon Phelps
    @

    American Abroad:It is a great pity to see how debased history education has become. Many schools eschew teaching history altogether and opt for the odious social studies.

    This allows them to freely teach completely out-of-context units like Slavery, Inequality, the Environment, and Conflict. This is intentional, of course, because putting things in historical context gets in the way of indoctrinating young minds.

    It is awfully difficult to create a generation of young social justice warriors if we actually had to learn about the amazing benefits of capitalism or the principles upon which America was founded.

    What schools do this? It sounds disgusting.

    • #11
  12. Dan Hanson Thatcher
    Dan Hanson
    @DanHanson

    Here in Canada,  history has been eviscerated.  My son had a grade 12 unit on WWII this year.  He was looking forward to it because he’s interested in the subject.  But in school this is what they learned about WWII:

    – How WWII affected women at home,  and paved the way for women in the workplace.

    – How awful nuclear bombs are.

    – Anne Frank and the holocaust

    That was about it.  I think all the rest of the WWII curriculum fit into a couple of classes.

    The rest of Canadian history seems to be pretty much an endless litany of the evils we have perpetrated against the native population, along with lots of stuff about women’s rights and lots of stories about immigrants and multiculturalism.

    Likewise,  science class is now dominated by global warming and ecology.  My kid was looking forward to the unit on space,  but it was cut short because the climate change unit ran long.

    The only topic they chose to cover in the space unit:  “Does rocket exhaust hurt the environment?”

    • #12
  13. Richard Anderson Member
    Richard Anderson
    @RichardAnderson

    Dan Hanson:Here in Canada, history has been eviscerated. My son had a grade 12 unit on WWII this year. He was looking forward to it because he’s interested in the subject. But in school this is what they learned about WWII:

    – How WWII affected women at home, and paved the way for women in the workplace.

    – How awful nuclear bombs are.

    – Anne Frank and the holocaust

    That was about it. I think all the rest of the WWII curriculum fit into a couple of classes.

    The rest of Canadian history seems to be pretty much an endless litany of the evils we have perpetrated against the native population, along with lots of stuff about women’s rights and lots of stories about immigrants and multiculturalism.

    Likewise, science class is now dominated by global warming and ecology. My kid was looking forward to the unit on space, but it was cut short because the climate change unit ran long.

    The only topic they chose to cover in the space unit: “Does rocket exhaust hurt the environment?”

    I know only too well Dan. I’ve lost count of the university graduates I’ve met – some in history! – who don’t understand the significance of Vimy Ridge or Juno Beach.

    • #13
  14. Mama Toad Member
    Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    Richard Anderson: I know only too well Dan. I’ve lost count of the university graduates I’ve met – some in history! – who don’t understand the significance of Vimy Ridge or Juno Beach.

    They think they do —  they think it shows us how white male patriarchy loves to send young men to die in a senseless war!

    Also, have you thought about what all those explosives did to the environment?…

    • #14
  15. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    Unfortunately we’ve now had a couple of generations of students raised with this new history.  And it can have some grave consequences when it come to foreign students who come to the U.S. for their education.  From Guests Of The Ayatollah by Mark Bowden:

    One of the students most despised by the hostages was a young woman named Nilufar Ebtekar who spoke excellent English acquired when she lived in Philadelphia while her father was working on a Doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania and where she attended school.

    At one point Ebtekar was lecturing hostage Tom Schaefer on evils of America including the “racist” decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Schaefer responded.

    “The Japanese started the war, and we ended it,” Schaefer said.
    “What do you mean, the Japanese started the war?” Ebtekar asked.
    “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so we bombed Hiroshima.”
    “Pearl Harbor?  Where’s Pearl Harbor?”
    “Hawaii”
    After a moment of silence Ebtekar asked “The Japanese bombed Hawaii?”
    “Yep” said Schaefer.  “They started it, and we ended it.”

    Ms. Ebtekar went on to found an Iranian Women’s NGO Network, became the first female Vice-President of Iran and in 2006 was named by the United Nations Environmental Program as a “Champion of the Earth”.  I recently saw her on the BBC chastising America for its foreign policy.

    • #15
  16. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    Tom Meyer, Ed.: Been on my too-read shelf for a long time. Perhaps I should get to it.

    Didn’t I lend you my copy?

    • #16
  17. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Richard Anderson:

    Dan Hanson:Here in Canada, history has been eviscerated. My son had a grade 12 unit on WWII this year. He was looking forward to it because he’s interested in the subject. But in school this is what they learned about WWII:

    – How WWII affected women at home, and paved the way for women in the workplace.

    – How awful nuclear bombs are.

    – Anne Frank and the holocaust

    That was about it. I think all the rest of the WWII curriculum fit into a couple of classes.

    The rest of Canadian history seems to be pretty much an endless litany of the evils we have perpetrated against the native population, along with lots of stuff about women’s rights and lots of stories about immigrants and multiculturalism.

    Likewise, science class is now dominated by global warming and ecology. My kid was looking forward to the unit on space, but it was cut short because the climate change unit ran long.

    The only topic they chose to cover in the space unit: “Does rocket exhaust hurt the environment?”

    I know only too well Dan. I’ve lost count of the university graduates I’ve met – some in history! – who don’t understand the significance of Vimy Ridge or Juno Beach.

    I should say!  I mean, I mock the residents of Soviet Canuckistan as much as the next red-blooded American, but it is good natured.  Everyone should know the mettle of the Canadians.  Even as we launch our jibes.

    • #17
  18. Dan Hanson Thatcher
    Dan Hanson
    @DanHanson

    I have a similar story from my own education.   I was in grade 12 and we had a young, earnest teacher fresh out of college.  This was 1980-1981.   This is how she approached the subject of nuclear bombs in WWII:

    “The United States is the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb on innocent people!”

    Me,  raising my hand: “Uh,  well, the U.S. was at war with Japan at the time…”

    Teacher:  “No they were not!”

    Me, with eyes bugging out:  “Excuse me?  Of course they were.  Remember Pearl Harbor?”

    Teacher:  “Oh, I suppose technically they were at war,  but it wasn’t a large war like in Europe.  There was no need for the bomb.”

    Me, still aghast:  “HUH?   Do you know how many thousands of Americans were killed at Okinawa?  Or Iwo Jima?  Or Guadalcanal?  Ever hear of the Bataan Death March?  Do you know what the casualty estimate was for an invasion of the Japanese mainland,  which was the alternative to dropping the bomb?”  (I was a bit of a WWII history buff)

    Teacher:  “Get out of my classroom.  You’re being disruptive.”

    …And that’s how I failed grade 12 Social Studies.

    • #18
  19. Richard Anderson Member
    Richard Anderson
    @RichardAnderson

    Dan, I’m sensing we had similar childhoods!

    • #19
  20. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Richard,

    If a math teacher was to suggest teaching calculus before algebra he’d be considered incompetent. Teaching the Civil War without explaining the Founding Era is every bit as absurd. Even if such a history was taught without overt bias, it would still serve to completely undermine the student’s understanding of the past.

    Teaching history as a series of disconnected facts serves two purposes: It kills the child’s interest in the subject by turning it into a very boring version of Trivial Pursuit and it insures that he will remember the facts but not the context. It’s that last element that’s vital in the culture wars.

    My view of the function of History is that it provides deep context. It really has no other function. If the deep context is destroyed or corrupted then History becomes a form of propaganda. If it has become a boring game of Trivial Pursuit that is a symptom of propaganda.

    Interesting that they want to cut it off at the Civil War. Obviously, the racism meme is too important to lose for the SJW. The old progressives that I was familiar with at school never were very interested in the Civil War. They just wanted to teach the Gilded Age through to FDR over and over and over. Can you guess why?

    Better Red than Republican.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #20
  21. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    The federal governments that have been afraid to reach over provincial governments and the school boards to give Canadians what they want and need: a sense that they live in a nation with a glorious past and a great future.

    Education is a provincial responsibility. There is no federal Ministry of Education (thank goodness!).

    I suppose the feds could cut off all education transfers to the provinces … and be immediately thrown out of office.

    • #21
  22. Mama Toad Member
    Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    James Gawron: My view of the function of History is that it provides deep context. I really has no other function. If the deep context is destroyed or corrupted then History becomes a form of propaganda. If has become a boring game of Trivial Pursuit that is a symptom of propaganda.

    My poor students are quite familiar with my love of deep context…

    “Mom, can’t I just get a simple answer?”

    • #22
  23. Crabby Appleton Inactive
    Crabby Appleton
    @CrabbyAppleton

    It is and always will be our responsibility as parents to know and to be active participants in our children’s educations whether they are being taught in free public, private or charter schools, or even post secondary schools.  When it becomes necessary we must unteach and reteach them or simply just teach them. But we can’t know which to do if we don’t know what is going on. I think the best way to instill in a young person a respect for history and a sense of its importance is to model it.  I remember once when my grandson and I were talking about the Revolution (which he was studying in middle school) and the subject of Benedict Arnold came up.  I offered him a big picture view of the Arnold story (as I had come to understand and appreciate it) .  Both versions are important and both versions serve a purpose and it’s important at some point in one’s educational development to be exposed to both.

    • #23
  24. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Matty Van:I wonder how many current historians have been able to go beyond the calculus of saints and savages, and not just in relation to Indians but in relation to all “oppressed” groups.

    Except that the Indians were savages.  Stone-age savages, practicing primitive agriculture, with no written language, living in something close to the Hobbesian state of nature (i.e. the war-of-all-against-all).  Romanticizing the Indians, as did Jefferson and Rousseau, is bad history.

    Granted, Jefferson was mixed in his assessment, as one of the charges in the Declaration of Independence was that:

    [George III] has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

    This was not pure propaganda.  Many of the American Colonials, including Washington, had fought various Indians.

    Now don’t get me wrong — while describing the Indians as savages in the 18th Century, even the British still practiced hanging, drawing, and quartering.  But this was done within a system of laws, and was a punishment limited to treason.  One of the principal reasons for the condemnation of the Nazi and Communist systems was their descent back into savagery.

    It was Western Civilization — then called Christian Civilization — that greatly advanced the cause of civilization in opposition to savagery, including the concepts of individual rights, the rule of law, and the moral condemnation of slavery.

    • #24
  25. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Michael Sanregret:We are told that the United States, which fought a war to end slavery, has to be held responsible for the sin of slavery. We are not told that the Democratic Party, which defended slavery until it no longer could be defended, has to be held responsible. How do we let them do this?

    The Dems do have an answer for this.  I don’t buy it, but they have one.  It goes like this:

    We progressives are the children of the Enlightenment.  We have been fighting a two-front political war throughout American history, against the money-grubbing GOP capitalist oppressors and the theocratic Southern racists.

    After the Civil War, the Republicans were the party of the capitalists, and they were triumphant.  We, the Enlightened, formed a temporary political alliance with the Southern racists to oppose the evil capitalist agenda and promote worker’s rights.  We succeeded brilliantly with FDR and the New Deal.

    After WWII, with the capitalists on the defensive, we started to deal with the theocratic Southern racists.  This split our coalition, and somewhat to our surprise, the GOP capitalist oppressors and the Southern racists put aside their natural hatred, and united against us.  To hide their hypocrisy, the GOP uses code words to appeal to the racists.  On the positive side , we picked up the black vote.

    The fact that we get 90% of the black vote is proof that we, the Enlightened, are on the side of the angels.

    • #25
  26. Dan Hanson Thatcher
    Dan Hanson
    @DanHanson

    Crabby Appleton:It is and always will be our responsibility as parents to know and to be active participants in our children’s educations whether they are being taught in free public, private or charter schools, or even post secondary schools. When it becomes necessary we must unteach and reteach them or simply just teach them. But we can’t know which to do if we don’t know what is going on.

    And the school system is making that very hard.   For example,  students here are no longer allowed to take their completed exams home – or even to see their own answers in many cases.   My kid would get 82% on an exam,  and have no idea what questions he got wrong.   All he’d be given is his grade.

    The putative reason for this is that the school wants to re-use the exams and therefore doesn’t want kids to take them,  snap a picture of them with their phones, and put them online.   But it also has the wonderful side-effect of not giving the students or parents the ability to inspect the exam results and question the teachers.

    How a child is supposed to correct his mistakes and gaps in learning when he’s not allowed to see what he got wrong on an exam is beyond me.  But I’m used to the actual education of children taking a back seat to the comfort of teachers and administrators.

    Also,  parent-teacher interviews used to be the place where you could discuss your child’s education,  find out their weaknesses and strengths, and use that to help the kids with education at home.  Now,  at my kid’s last school the parent-teacher interviews were held in a public gymnasium,  and parents were specifically forbidden from asking any questions about their own child because of ‘privacy concerns’.  That also has the happy side-effect of immunizing the teachers from difficult questions posed by parents of their poorly-educated students.

    And after we’re done trashing the teaching of history in the schools,  we can start on science, which if anything is even worse.  When I was in high school,  matriculation required two grade 12 level sciences,  plus grade 12 math.  That meant three years of science in two subjects  plus three years of Math in high school,   Now in Alberta you can graduate by taking two ‘general science’ years and Math 20.  You don’t need any grade 12 science or math at all.

    But you still have to take Social Studies in grade 12 to graduate.

    • #26
  27. Underwood Inactive
    Underwood
    @Underwood

    Arizona Patriot:

    Michael Sanregret:We are told that the United States, which fought a war to end slavery, has to be held responsible for the sin of slavery. We are not told that the Democratic Party, which defended slavery until it no longer could be defended, has to be held responsible. How do we let them do this?

    The Dems do have an answer for this. I don’t buy it, but they have one. It goes like this:

    [snip]

    Wow. I’ve got to hand it to them: That’s pretty darned good.

    Almost plausible even, provided we forget the entire history of progressive, “scientific” racism.

    Oh, wait…

    • #27
  28. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Underwood:

    Yeah, it is plausible, and they have an answer to the eugenicist criticism as well — they say sure, we had our crackpots, every movement does, you can’t judge us all by that.  Even Teddy Roosevelt, the GOP hero, favored eugenics.

    The progressive storyline also explains why they make a big deal out of every racial incident involving a Republican or a white cop (who are mostly Republicans).  To the progressive mind, these are not isolated incidents.  They are proof that the GOP remains an evil conspiracy of the one-percenter capitalist exploiters and the racist Southern theocrats.

    • #28
  29. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    Arizona Patriot:Underwood:

    Yeah, it is plausible, and they have an answer to the eugenicist criticism as well — they say sure, we had our crackpots, every movement does, you can’t judge us all by that. Even Teddy Roosevelt, the GOP hero, favored eugenics.

    The progressive storyline also explains why they make a big deal out of every racial incident involving a Republican or a white cop (who are mostly Republicans). To the progressive mind, these are not isolated incidents. They are proof that the GOP remains an evil conspiracy of the one-percenter capitalist exploiters and the racist Southern theocrats.

    More than anything I find that most are simply not interested in the theory of progressivism or its origins.  It’s as though it has nothing to do with them.  They will claim the righteousness of the programs they like going back to the New Deal but they have absolutely no interest in history or political theory.

    • #29
  30. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Dan Hanson:I have a similar story from my own education. I was in grade 12 and we had a young, earnest teacher fresh out of college. This was 1980-1981. This is how she approached the subject of nuclear bombs in WWII:
    Teacher: “Get out of my classroom. You’re being disruptive.”

    …And that’s how I failed grade 12 Social Studies.

    Mine was contradicting a teacher who did not know that Horatio Nelson died at Trafalgar.

    In her partial defense, I had missed a question about Nelson earlier, but on this one I knew I was right, and so made a bigger deal of it that was probably necessary.

    In my defense, I was right.

    • #30
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