Colorado students walk out of class to protest right-wing revision of history

[Indy Texas]

What is history if you don't teach the bad stuff?

And why is being rebellious bad? Weren't we founded on rebellion?

Rebellion is only good if you're a bunch of old white people in Nevada with large guns threatening to shoot federal authorities for trying to remove you from land that does not belong to you.

[Indy Texas]

Yeah, even for Cassius, I don't get his angle here.

He doesn't understand that propaganda != history. Ask any FOX news viewer and they will say the same thing that Cassius does. "So what if its propaganda. Its history/news."

I really doubt anyone would willingly admit that the news they watch or history they believe in is propaganda. Most just prefer to say that about the news/views of other people.

I don't think the Left or the Right in America is pushing propaganda in the sense of blatantly lying. No one is telling students that Ronald Reagan was born atop a mountain while a double rainbow appeared in the sky as an auspicious sign from the Heavens or characterizing the Cold War as a vast communist conspiracy against the virtuous American people.

But there are only so many days of school and only so many pages long that history books can be. Some things inevitably have to be left out so that others can be included. There's the rub.

A week talking about Phyllis Schlafly is a week that can't be spent talking about Rachel Carson. If you spend too much time talking about the booming economy of the late '80s, you leave no time to discuss deindustrialization or the decline of inner cities. If you want to talk about Jim Crow, you have to cut World War II short. Everything has tradeoffs.

[Indy Texas]

FWIW, I never studied anything beyond World War II in any elementary, middle or high school history class I ever took. There was never enough time in the school year to get further than that. I distinctly remember that in my 8th grade American history class, we started talking about World War I the last day of class before the final and our teacher said there wouldn't be anything about WWI on the final for that reason. He also claimed we were the worst class he ever had and that our counterproductive, off-topic behavior was the reason we only made it up to 1915-ish.

[Indy Texas]

Looks like we're in for another 50 years of White Guilt. I thought it would be done and dusted by the time the 21st century arrived.

Yes, because 400+ years of colonialism, racism, discrimination and their social and economic aftereffects should have been completely erased the minute the the last piece of civil rights legislation was passed in the 1960s.

[Indy Texas]

I question whether its worth it to do a lot of history with middle schoolers. The age of the kids and nature of the teaching doesn't lend itself accurate teaching. High school seems like a much better time to get into history and civics.

Most of my middle school history was pretty shrill and simplistic. It was either "OMG teh Anglos were EVUL to the Natives/French!!!!" or "The Fathers of Confederation were SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME". High school provided an opportunity for a much more nuanced view.

I'd much rather cut out history in middle school and then do a solid in depth history course in high school than the mess memphis just described.

Well, let's be honest, how engaging and stimulating could Canadian history possibly be?

[Indy Texas]

I question whether its worth it to do a lot of history with middle schoolers. The age of the kids and nature of the teaching doesn't lend itself accurate teaching. High school seems like a much better time to get into history and civics.

Most of my middle school history was pretty shrill and simplistic. It was either "OMG teh Anglos were EVUL to the Natives/French!!!!" or "The Fathers of Confederation were SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME". High school provided an opportunity for a much more nuanced view.

I'd much rather cut out history in middle school and then do a solid in depth history course in high school than the mess memphis just described.

History should be different for middle schoolers, not just left out.  If you want to get away from the simplistic moralism, teach it in a different way.  Connect it to archaeology and the history of science and technology. I think it is a great time to do ancient history.

It makes sense. The further back in time one goes the less bias creeps into teaching. 

Not in this country for obvious reasons. But I can see Greeks being very divided about some aspects of teaching the history of ancient Greece and by extension ancient Egypt or the legacy of Alexander the Great or something. The Chinese probably have a lot of arguments about how to teach ancient Chinese civilization.