should that be taught in History or in Gvmt or Ethics?
When public schools deliberately don't teach an important topic, is it right ?
- Thread starter Cazzo
- Start date
should that be taught in History or in Gvmt or Ethics?
Hmmmmmmmmm...
All right, are they separable in these cases? The issues transcend the boundaries of the courses, I think. If I had to split it, I'd say "deal with each element in each course". History gets the numbers, Ethics the human issue. But shouldn't the social sciences kind of slew among each other? The whole point of history is learning from it.
All right, are they separable in these cases? The issues transcend the boundaries of the courses, I think. If I had to split it, I'd say "deal with each element in each course". History gets the numbers, Ethics the human issue. But shouldn't the social sciences kind of slew among each other? The whole point of history is learning from it.
That's cool, I think some people (and teachers) that like Communism actually don't want this information disseminated (as we can see in our public schools). You're one of the few people I've met that believe in Communism, yet don't hide from or try to hide it's failings.
To be fair though on the pollution, yes there's pollution generated under Capitalism, but pollution is also mass produced by Communist nations and just about every land throughout history. So it's not just a "Capitalist thing". Likewise, Capitalism isn't the only entity that "chases money", I think you'll find that under Communism as well, where Communist govts. (in some cases) take all the wealth and land for themselves, and everyone else lives like peasants.
Castro is an example of this : http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-05-04-castro_x.htm
On the pollution issue, I agree also: it isn't just a Capitalist thing in the present day. Some communist nations have a worse record (*cough cough Vistula River*) in this respect than capitalist ones or social democracies. But I think Marx summed it up well in his introduction to The Communist Manifesto: the economic imperative of the bourgeoisie (middle class yobbos, basically) drives the considerations of culture, of equality, out of existence and with them goes our reflective humanity. Or: is the pursuit of money driving us in the right direction?
I thought History told what happened, not how it should have happened.
seriously? You think humans learn from history. Humans take part in ethnic cleansing all the time. What was learned from the Holocaust?
WWII is a big cultural deal for the US. We've been pretending to be good guys for the past 60 years because of it. It's an event of incredible importance for our national identity. As far as a public school's purpose of indoctrinating good little patriots go, WWII deserves more attention than failed political ideologies.
I seem to remember that high school history was deficient in many areas. I did learn about the Communist revolutions and Pol Pot. As far as the deaths attributed to communist agricultural reforms, I don't think anyone could call that deliberate murder. Basically, if you really want to learn history, go to college, or read about it yourself. High school was intended to teach you how to learn, not necesarily teach you all the facts you are supposed to remember. I forgot almost all of what I learned there, but I re-educated myself on certain key areas of interest.
In general, I think Cazzo's notion of democides amount to a rabid anti-communist frenzy, the "red scare" that is so obsolete now. Why don't we teach the full story of how we treated the American Indians? Or the blatant land theft of Texas from Mexico? Or the equally dishonest Spanish-American war in order to seize Cuba? There are so many areas of history that are neglected, it's strange to single out the history of Communism.
My father recalls arguing with his high school teacher who insisted that Columbus discovered America.
In general, I think Cazzo's notion of democides amount to a rabid anti-communist frenzy, the "red scare" that is so obsolete now. Why don't we teach the full story of how we treated the American Indians? Or the blatant land theft of Texas from Mexico? Or the equally dishonest Spanish-American war in order to seize Cuba? There are so many areas of history that are neglected, it's strange to single out the history of Communism.
My father recalls arguing with his high school teacher who insisted that Columbus discovered America.
By what, handing out worksheets, ringing bells, rigid schedules, inflexible rules, stupid policy, ignoring basic constitutional rights, and forcing a bunch of retards suited for little else than ox-work to waste everyone's time? Yeah, right.
I was trying to look on the bright side of it. I hated every minute of it too. My history teacher was so boring, I credit him with kick-starting my art career. I would spend his entire class time filling up my notebook with pages and pages of drawings. One day he called me to see him after class and made me show him my notes! He was displeased.
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Lynn Cheney, wife of the former Vice President of the United States, once strenuously objected to the attention given a historical figure like Harriet Tubman, lamenting that schools should teach more about Robert E. Lee instead.
I mention this because there is a lot that doesn't get taught in high school, so much so that we couldn't reasonably pack it all in.
So when it comes to a matter of priorities, what do we do?
Can the Great Leap be taught in an isolated context, offering no understanding of the cultural history leading to it? How would we shoehorn that into the curriculum?
And, given the distortions of secondary-level history education in the United States, how should it be taught? There are, after all, plenty of people out there ready to argue that the historical record itself should not be taught, that myth should replace history in the curriculum, because, for instance, Columbus was a hero, damn it, and students shouldn't be taught the reality of the human toll. He's an American hero, damn it!
So how much, and in what context? How would you fit it into the curriculum? And considering that we didn't fight a "world war" over the Great Leap—as we did against the Nazis—is the comparison of the three years of the Great Leap to the Nazis in the '30s and '40s appropriate?
Lynn Cheney, wife of the former Vice President of the United States, once strenuously objected to the attention given a historical figure like Harriet Tubman, lamenting that schools should teach more about Robert E. Lee instead.
I mention this because there is a lot that doesn't get taught in high school, so much so that we couldn't reasonably pack it all in.
So when it comes to a matter of priorities, what do we do?
Can the Great Leap be taught in an isolated context, offering no understanding of the cultural history leading to it? How would we shoehorn that into the curriculum?
And, given the distortions of secondary-level history education in the United States, how should it be taught? There are, after all, plenty of people out there ready to argue that the historical record itself should not be taught, that myth should replace history in the curriculum, because, for instance, Columbus was a hero, damn it, and students shouldn't be taught the reality of the human toll. He's an American hero, damn it!
So how much, and in what context? How would you fit it into the curriculum? And considering that we didn't fight a "world war" over the Great Leap—as we did against the Nazis—is the comparison of the three years of the Great Leap to the Nazis in the '30s and '40s appropriate?
I went to an optional, public middle & high school, so everyone that was there was forced to go there by their parents, and hadn't been kicked out for failing in an atmosphere of self-determination. We even got to make up the curriculum for our own classes to meet credit requirements.
It was going to real high schools for AP classes (which my school did not offer) that I got to see, first hand, how bloody awful school could be when no one, not students, nor teachers, wanted to be there. And if you wanted to be in school and learn stuff, you could bet your life would be made miserable by the multitude that didn't. High school's for socializing our young. I have a theory that scientists hold such negative, deterministic views of all life because they were beat up in grade school and couldn't get laid in high school.
Pointing out a very OBVIOUS bias in our public school education of 20th century democides isn't a "red scare" tactic....
This thread's about the ethics of public schools deliberately not covering these largest of democides and mass murders,
larger than perhaps any other, even the Nazi holocaust that public schools rightfully cover.
It was arguably not mass murder. Did the Great Depression result in many deaths? Probably. Do we count that too? My larger point, one that several others have made, is that there is alot left out of most grade school curriculums.
Well as already mentioned in WW2 the US was involved, in, for example, the great leap forward, not. It is more a blatant bias against histories of other countries rather than government systems. If it is of consolation to you, at least in Europe quite a lot is taught regarding the Soviet system (and how it arose) with all the nasty bits (including gulags).
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You have to look at history a little more analytically than that. For this purpose it's not possible to separate the Holocaust from WWII.
Documents captured after the war revealed that the Nazi government realized that even a victorious Third Reich would not be able to get away with exterminating the Jews in peacetime, therefore they accelerated their efforts to complete the job during the war. This is the phenomenon known as "the fog of war," writ large. Very, very, very large.
What we learned from WWII is that war makes things like the Holocaust possible. Sixty million people died in WWII. (There are various estimates but this one is pretty reasonable.) A full two percent of the population of the entire planet. That includes not only battle casualties but second-order effects such as Russian civilians dying from the destruction of their infrastructure in wintertime. In that context it's easy to see why the Germans thought that the world would accept their postwar explanation that another six million Jews, in addition to the first six million, were simply war casualties.
Which means that, in a sense, they were war casualties. If the world were not at war, they would not have died!
We learned a lot from WWII, and the Holocaust was only part of that lesson. It was the bloodiest war in human history, and since then every nation has been reluctant to get into a war of that scope again. Only a handful of wars in the last sixty years have body counts exceeding one million. And only one, the Congo Civil War, ran over two million; unfortunately it was closer to five million but that's still a whole order of magnitude smaller than the war that was raging when I was born.
Countries are reluctant to come to each other's aid for fear of starting a regional war that will snowball. It's sad that nobody tried to rescue the people of Tibet or Georgia or Palestine or Darfur, but does anyone here think for two seconds that if a major power had stood up to China or Russia or Israel or whoever the hell is calling the shots in Sudan (my wife says it's the Chinese), that it wouldn't have blown up in our faces?
We Americans recently overthrew our government--in the peaceful, democratic American style of holding an election but nonetheless it was intense--largely because we don't want to fight a war in the Middle East.
That's what we learned from WWII, and the Holocaust just gave it some clarity.
You wouldn't think Communism was a "failed political ideologie" the way university "professors" caress it. The genocides and democides of the 20th century are very important in the fact, at least most of us, don't want them repeated. The way public schools deliberately "overlook" the largest democides in human history has to leave you wondering if they're sympathetic to the largest of mass murders when committed by Communists.
Back to the question, is this ethical for public schools to do this ?