scary

[pastwatcher]

What if the only significant educational "reform" we manage in the next few years is Christian-imperialist American history? The history classes I took were pretty bad even when it came to US history, and my world geography still sucks. (I still can't BELIEVE that I never learned about our 20th-century genocides, such as the Japanese in WWII, or the horrific cage-->abuse-->kill "educational" program for Native American children.) But I'm pretty sure this would be worse.

EDIT: Though maybe I should be taking seriously the threat that growing creationist education poses to scientists. (I've never been one to say that religion should be abolished altogether; spiritual religion is a comfort to people, institutionalized religion can do good things as well as bad. But I abhor any mentality that enables people not to take responsibility for their own morals and actions...so I'm starting to wonder.)

Comments

[scazon.livejournal.com]

If you are interested in bad American history taught in schools from elementary through high school levels, I can recommend no book better than James Loewen (http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/)'s Lies My Teacher Told Me (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780743296281-5). He tackles your question head on, exploring why we teach horribly distorted versions of history in schools (a significant part of it is the fault of the textbook publishing industry, which he discusses at great length in one of the best parts of the book). I also recommend his Lies Across America (http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780743296298-2), which is a similiar sort of idea except he looks specifically at historical sites/monuments and examines how and why they get wrong what they get wrong. (If it's not obvious, I'm a huge James Loewen fan. I've just embarked on reading his newest book (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780807749913-0) which I picked up in Powells in Portland last weekend, which is about specific pedagogical methods for teaching history.)

[pastwatcher]

I've added them both to my to-read list (on Goodreads)! Thanks.

[mikevonkorff.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call Japan's actions in World War II genocide (they certainly weren't trying to wipe out the populations of the countries they conquered), but I'll admit that we didn't much focus on the vast numbers of Chinese killed by Japan in World History.

As for that article: yikes. Luckily, most states are saner than Texas. (I've got a feeling that if Texas adopts an explicitly, unapologetically Christian curriculum, other states will be much warier of following its lead...)

[dergnoam.livejournal.com]

Most states are saner than Texas, but, unfortunately, Texas is one of the few where the state actually buys the textbooks. In New York, for instance, there is a state board that prescribes (pretty loose) standards for what schools have to teach, but it doesn't order them to buy specific books to fulfill that standard.

[pastwatcher]

I said "our genocides" because I was talking about the US's treatment of resident Japanese people during the war.

[dergnoam.livejournal.com]

As the article points out, this has already been an issue for almost a decade.
Stuff like this always gives me pause to my general predilection to think that American education would be improved if it was less decentralized.

[pastwatcher]

I know that the fact that Texas essentially decides which textbooks are "cheaply" available has been a problem for a while; I just didn't know that the distortions they wanted to bring in were that bad.

Go Texas!

[zezy-daemon.livejournal.com]

This might make centralized education sound good right now, but would you have wanted Bush (or people like him) calling the shots for all the states?

Re: Go Texas!

[dergnoam.livejournal.com]

Its a tough call, right? There is fear of politicization, but the US education system is worse than that of other developed countries. Now I don't know a lot about education policy, but my impression is that a lot of that is due to having a decentralized system run by people who don't know what they're doing, with enormous resource imbalances between districts.
ugh.