'our version of history will prove we were right!'

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  • Bwalker545
    Bwalker545 Posts: 162
    Couldnt tell ya, Im a long way from Floridia...though I did go to first and second grade in that state... I know that in WA these things were taught, but never really as the Gigantic issues they should be. I felt more like "this was some ugliness in the past...we are better than that now...its not really important anymore" But that was my own experiance with a fairly stuck-up rich HS were everyone was going to be buisness majors and science people...god I hated it...Ill see if I can look into it. I have people in the dept that can probably help me understand this better...Give a some time.
    "Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table: 2+2=5" 1984
  • ryan198
    ryan198 Posts: 1,015
    farfromglorified wrote:
    How does this prevent teachers from presenting the "dark side" of American history? Is it not a fact that millions of American Indians were killed? Is it not a fact that millions of people were enslaved here? It is not a fact that questionable behavior underlies many events in our history?
    I think the fear here isn't that there are dark sides to our history that are 'facts', but it is the knowable and testable thing that is bothering some of us...most of the knowable and testable about the past is information that lives on in the form of written word and recordings made by rich white men, by and for their needs. Thus, while we can speculate about other voices, women, native americans, blacks, and other minorities at the time we do not really have an equal playing field of WHOSE history this knowable and testable is coming from. As such, since these ideas are SPECULATION, knowable and testable they are not under the Jebber definition...therefore the knowable and testable information, which comes from rich white men (since they dominated the hard copy that we have of history) clearly is shaped to benefit their intersts as it has led to the idea that slavery wasn't that bad, that the Mexican-American War was fought under imaginary auspices (sound familiar) but it didn't matter because that land was ours anyway, etc. Thus while it is knowable and testable that we went to War with Mexico, or that we have politically and economically dominated the Dominican Republic since the 1830's the despair, and delusion with the American system that could come from knowing this stuff is snuffed out because we don't have very much knowable and testable stuff from the past that testifies to the despair and delusion, rather we have information that celebrates this domination.

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