You were also likely taught that the genocide of indigenous Americans was a past event, too.
I have met people who did not realize that indigenous Americans still exist.
It certainly was shocking to find an active ongoing eugenics program was still active in the 1970’s.
The reality of people existing in active oppression by the US government is absolutely not the impression that I got.
I’m pretty sure Indigenous women are still being sterilized without their knowledge or consent during births or other medical procedures in parts of the US and Canada.
Have any examples?
Just Google “forced sterilization of indigenous women” https://apnews.com/article/canada-indigenous-women-sterilization-apology-reparations-ebcacc0f27b8d4c12d8690718202531d
Clearly still happening recently in Canada, how about the US?
Y𝖾s, including in the Unit𝖾d Stat𝖾s. Quick s𝖾arch𝖾s pull up many r𝖾sults, both on indig𝖾nous p𝖾opl𝖾s and on many oth𝖾rs including migrants in ICE d𝖾t𝖾ntion.
Example 1 - Indigenous Peoples Here’s a link that claims “From 1907 until as recently as 2018, tens of thousands of Native women underwent tubal ligation”
Example 2 - Migrants Here’s a summary link of prior/current cases. “On September 14, 2020, nurse Dawn Wooten filed a whistleblower complaint . . . Wooten said that nearly every [detained migrant] woman who went to see a doctor was told she had to undergo a hysterectomy.”
Example 3 - Another link with more summaries and cited sources. Some were court & judge approved coercion. “As recently as May 2017, Tennessee Judge Sam Benningfield signed an order that offered misdemeanor offenders 30-day sentence reductions if they underwent either a vasectomy or a birth control implant [16].” “Between 2005 and 2013, 144 women were coerced into sterilization in California [19].”
Edit: formatting
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/27/canada-indigenous-women-sterilisation-lawsuit closest I find find in 5 minutes
Another quick search https://www.nccih.ca/docs/child and youth/FS-Forced-sterilization-EN-Web.pdf
For me, it was that protesting was only ever discussed as peaceful, civil activity, as was a way of communicating demands outside of the voting cycle.
Unionization and workers rights were never discussed. I didn’t learn about unions as a concept until nearly graduation when my first job had so much required training about how dangerous they were, and of course I assumed they were full of it and did my own investigation.
Required training about the dangers of unions? Seriously? That is just so messed up…
Oh yes! This actually happened to me multiple times. Typically it was something about how unions result in lower pay or would not represent my interests.
Of course that’s all BS! You only have to use your brain a little. For example, even if they’re not perfect representatives, who else then is going to represent you? Yourself? You don’t stand a chance against a large business.
The costs of union fees was a sticking point, and it’s easy to waive that in front of somebody’s face when it’s harder to measure the impact of your union fighting for fair pay and blocking exploitation. The counter argument is that not all benefits are easily quantifiable. Negotiated raises are just part of the total compensation, and the stated pay numbers you’d get without unions in the world are made up because you can claim whatever you want about something that is not the case.
It always bugs me a little when Labor Day rolls around and people just kind of ignore how workers’ rights were literally fought and died for, but as you said, they don’t teach us about Blair Mountain or Haymarket Square on purpose.
And who was basically always on the wrong side?
The US military.
It is very much ongoing.
Also, not being taught that the civil war and slavery and all that shit was fucking EVIL
Edit: I grew up in the south
It is mind boggling to me that someone, in the 21st century can say: “oh yeah, owning human beings like property, that’s a-ok!”
I’m an older millennial- in the 90s they were legit telling us “some slaves had it really good”
We watched Roots in the classroom, but only the episode where LaVar Burton gets brutalized by a whip for refusing to say his name was Toby.
We also got a foot note about John Brown, I had no idea he was a white guy and one of the coolest motherfuckers to walk this earth until I was an adult.
The only thing I am glad my US Public School education gave me were a few history teachers who directly talked about politics, activism, and repeatedly getting arrested for protesting the School of the Americas.
Checks and balances in the federal government is my biggest disappointment. They aren’t working.
Lobbyists write checks to each sell-out traitor-to-democracy, in a balanced way.
When my school was hit by a natural disaster, I had the opportunity to switch from a premier Catholic school to a premier public school for two semesters.
…let me tell you, the biggest disservice that you received was a systematic lowering of academic standards. The difference was night and day. There is no way that that curriculum was preparing students for college.
Since there is a limited window in which brain plasticity is at its peak, catching up at university isn’t an option. Public school students are at a permanent disadvantage; it’s an equal opportunity problem.
Since there is a limited window in which brain plasticity is at its peak, catching up at university isn’t an option.
I call bullshit. It may be true that there is a peak, but it’s not like after that peak it’s hopeless… I’m 50 years old and I work a job where I literally have to learn an ever changing product in order to support it, and I’m doing fine, I just got promoted to senior so I’m teaching the new hires. I haven’t even been there 5 years yet.
With sufficiently motivated people, it can happen. I tutored people in a small community college for a semester. It was the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.
Honestly it was mostly single moms that never understood algebra in high school but needed to pass their nursing degree requirements. When it clicked, and the light shone in their eyes, it felt like a personal success. I wish it paid better because I’d love to do it forever
The teaching of history in US public schools very specifically focuses on peaceful protest and little else.
They want to delegitimize the use of force and downplay state violence, which is why you probably weren’t required to read ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’ or taught about the Tulsa Massacre or the Battle of Blair Mountain. It’s why Malcolm X and Nat Turner are mostly ignored while all you hear about in your black history segments is MLK and Harriet Tubman. It’s why we’re taught about the euphemistically-named ‘Reservation’ system, when in fact, these were shitty, oppressive concentration camps for indigenous people and they were required to go there or be killed while their ancestral lands were stolen. (Which is not too dissimilar from what’s happening in Gaza right now with the support of both American ruling parties.)
In hindsight, it’s rather shocking to me that in my fifth grade class we were taught about conquistadors and no one batted an eye when I had dead bodies in my diorama about Francisco Pizarro. There’s probably no way that would fly today.
I’m still learning shit in my 40’s, reading history for my own enjoyment, that I should have been taught in school. Here’s another tidbit you probably never learned about: An executed slave named Mark whose body was used as a landmark after his execution, even by Paul Revere: https://www.paulreverehouse.org/mark-hung-in-chains-slavery-paul-reveres-midnight-ride/
Also, if anyone reads my comment above and has suggestions for books or articles or tidbits that could benefit from reading, I’d love to hear them.
That’s why they always showed photos in black and white. It wouldn’t do to remind people that this was very recent, historically speaking.
The older you get, the more bullshit will be revealed
They didn’t even mention Black Panthers… meanwhile, BP should get more credit than MLK and Malcolm X together.
They weren’t “peaceful protestors”, so not even brought up.
That was a long ago, has anyone here been taught differently? My school was shit (obviously)
Definitely read the book This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed.
Non-violence by the SCPP is now treated as not only their only tactic, but the only valid tactic ever. But that’s historically just not true. Even Dr. King and others realized that their tactic of non-violence was working with other groups who were not pledged to non-violence - and in the setting where the US was worried about its image versus the USSR in the third world. Nor was it the primary driver of what limited success the movement had.
I was homeschooled for the first decade of my life. Specifically, I visited the city’s library and took back books to my rural homestead. Larry Gonick made a long running series of history books, and the United States entry certainly mentions the unsavory aspects of America.
Larry Gonick drew heavily from A People’s History of The United States, to his credit. I gave these to all the kids in the family.
If you haven’t read The Cartoon History of The Universe, I cannot recommend it enough.
Got the whole series, plus some other ones about other topics, like chemistry and sex. About the only downside of Gonick’s work, is that the older volumes are a bit dated - the archaeology and whatnot starts from about the 80’s or thereabouts.
Wish I was a billionaire, so that I could commission remakes and an animated series for all to freely partake in.
00000
Speaking of comics, there are assorted manga that tackle the sciences or historical eras. For example, ‘The Manga Guide to the Universe’, which covers stellar phenomena, how to calculate distances, and so forth. Bride’s Story is a slice of life about a steppe people - roughly in Mongolia, I think. Practices for marriage, how to bleed out an animal, and more are presented. Meanwhile, ‘Spice and Wolf’ is about mercantile economics for Medieval Europe, such as currency debasing.
Manga is very good for pairing a slice-of-life narrative alongside education.
heh yeah - his Cartoon Guide to the Computer actually has one of the best explanations of how basic circuts are translated into boolean logic of ANY source out there, still.
I loved these books so much when I was a kid!
I realized as I got older how much of our history, the parts they have to acknowledge, are treated like they’re a singular moment in the past, resolved, and somehow could never resurface in a different form.
The push to frame the Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage movements as the “correct” form of how American citizens call out inequality is also sanitized to the point it becomes toothless. We’re given a version where people just gather, speak out, sometimes get beaten to a pulp/jailed/killed but so long as they remain non-violent, eventually society will feel bad and someone with the power to change things will do so.
There are times where large scale protests are beneficial because it rallies and shows the scale of opposition. Sometimes witnessing the violence of the oppressors against peaceful people shocks and horrifies. But we’re at a point where watching cops, ICE, and Proud Boys brutalize others is fetish porn for MAGAts, and mass gatherings for the sake of showing up but not networking and continuing the movement during the weeks in-between is futile. They have no reason to see us as a threat if all we do is show up for a few hours one weekend every six weeks and hold signs.
And to my fellow dissatisfied leftists, if your aversion to anything more direct is rooted in the idea that previous protests were successful because they stayed “peaceful” and took their lumps, you’re protesting the way the machine wants you to. Just enough liberty to feel like you’re standing up to oppression but not doing anything that actually challenges the oppressor.
The Republicans are keeping people exhausted and scared enough to intimidate them out of organising.
Not being taught about the Golden Age is another one.
Ironically we did spend a lot of time on that (I went to school in the eighties) and a lot of folks knew Reagan had really done us dirty. It was probably above my head.
Also, I went to a really good school.
Reagan had really done us dirty
He definitely kicked the county while it was down. But a big part of the US Golden Age was being the last economy standing after WW2.
The end of America’s economic dominance was inevitable, as old colonial powers re-industrialized and newly liberated post-colonial states gained control of their natural resources for domestic use.
By Nixon, American global dominance was sunsetting regardless of our domestic policies. That’s why we gave up the gold standard and adopted the Petrodollar as a globalized economic strategy. We couldn’t just import everyone else’s gold and sell it back to them at a premium anymore.
Mine connected history with current events and heck I took a class called current affairs.
The public school system was sort of ultimately designed to make good little obedient factory line workers. Not a surprise at all, they want you to think it’s a thing of the past and get complacent. How do you think we got where we are today?
