Posted on 10/07/2022 10:22:28 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
We should stop teaching history in our schools. The way history is now being taught leads to a racist society, perpetuates white privilege, and overlooks the contributions of women and minorities. I ask school districts to immediately remove history curricula, books, and materials that unfairly communicate history until suitable alternatives are developed.
Enslaved people built our young nation and made possible an economy that would throw off the control of the most powerful country then on earth, Great Britain. But, oh, at what a price.
According to Bennett Minton in The Washington Post, some schools across the country intend to teach slavery by way of “The 1619 Project,” the essays published in the New York Times last year that won the Pulitzer Prize. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, is so against its version of history that he has introduced a bill barring the use of federal funds to teach it. “As the Founding Fathers said,” Cotton told an interviewer in defending his stance, slavery “was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.”
This action is not an effort to erase history. But, the dominant majority culture has to realize the effect that the current telling of history has on a people, especially Black people. Important parts of our history have not been told or taught because it hasn’t been believed it actually happened.
Until they saw it on their TV screens, the dominant white culture didn’t believe that Blacks could be treated like John Lewis was treated, getting knocked unconscious with a cracked skull just because he was nonviolently protesting for the simple right to vote. Many did not believe that so many Blacks are victimized by police until they saw the last 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George Floyd’s life under the knee of a policeman, recorded on video.
In her recently released and highly recommended new book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Isabel Wilkerson describes a caste system as an artificial construction that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups. Regarding Black people in America, Wilkerson wrote, “This caste system would trigger the deadliest war on U.S. soil, lead to the ritual killings of thousands of subordinate-caste people in lynchings, and become the source of inequalities that becloud and destabilize the country to this day.”
Regarding the teaching of this history, Wilkerson instructs further, “You don’t ball up in a corner with guilt or shame at these discoveries. You don’t, if you are wise, forbid any mention of them. In fact, you do the opposite. You educate yourself (and) … then you ...work to ensure that these things, whatever they are, don’t happen again.”
I taught social studies to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders in the Chicago Public Schools for six years. I have received many letters of support from history teachers supporting this move. I have heard from teachers who don’t have enough resources and have had to buy their own more appropriate instructional materials.
One Illinois eighth-grade social studies teacher wrote to me to say, “How can educators teach students an accurate history in which the contributions of Black and African-Americans, Latinx Americans, women, religious minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other historically marginalized groups are included when none of their training and education has prepared them to do so? If there is to be widespread change, there must be adequate funding, guidance, collaboration with both K-12 teachers and those in higher education to address gaps in educator preparation courses, and measures of accountability that not only include teachers but curriculum directors, instructional coaches, and administrators.”
Until a suitable alternative is developed, we should instead devote greater attention toward civics and ensuring students understand our democratic processes and how they can be involved. Students need education about voting, how a bill becomes a law, and how citizens can influence the governments that affect their daily lives.
I proudly fly the American flag on my house every day of the year because I love the flag and “the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is our own moment in history. Together, let’s create an open and fair way to teach and learn our history, if we want to achieve a more perfect union.
La Shawn K. Ford is a Democratic state representative for Illinois’ 8th District. He wrote this originally for InsideSources.com.
Parents should stop sending their kids to public schools.
Indeed.
The are unionized. The Unions are huge money-laundering machines for the Democrat party.
The get away with all this because the Media is part of, maybe the controlling part, of the Democrat/Progressive machine.
1. I don't read articles that capitalize "black" and not "white."
2. I figured it was another ignorant lefty rant.
And, I wasn't wrong:
The way history is now being taught leads to a racist society, perpetuates white privilege, and overlooks the contributions of women and minorities.
This statement is not only wrong it is profoundly wrong. The contributions of blacks, women and other "minorities" is vastly overstated in school textbooks - while how this country was built and created is downplayed, if covered at all. Same for the Founding Documents, especially the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers are portrayed as evil slave holders who stole the idea for the Constitution from local Indian tribes.
This was obviously written by someone with complete ignorance of what is in U.S. high school history texts and what is being taught in American classrooms.
I say this as a public school teacher with 33 years of experience.
Grammar rules are racist, don't you know, proper grammar is a symbol and example of White Supremacism and privilege - as is using red ink when grading papers.
I wish I were kidding, but I'm not.
Public schools don’t teach, they indoctrinate.
This is another “Big Lie” pushed by the Left and makes about as much sense as Rich people got rich stealing from the poor.
If you're lucky you might get one good class/teacher a year, like a good science teacher or math teacher. but then again, that was back when I was in H.S., I imagine they're all bad now.
I’m going to eat my peanut butter sandwich while standing on my linoleum floor...
No they didn't. They picked cotton. Chinese laborers who worked on the railroads had far more impact on our growth as a nation.
LaShawn Ford and Charles V. Frederick are what’s wrong with government school education.
Unfortunately, we don't.
We own it in its original form, but that original form is unknown. But the original form of history hasn't been taught in generations.
Our Founders were deeply Christian. That's been taken out of schools for decades. Nobody knows what Natural Law is coming out of a school and its written right into the Declaration of Independence.
Additionally about our Founders, many were actively abolitionist. Good luck finding a student who knows that from a teacher.
On abolition, I guarantee you that every single student without exception - 100% of them, think that abolitionism began in Britain and eventually spread here. The opposite is true. That was an American idea in the context of transatlantic slavery.
Slavery was largely European; European ships, European cargo, European ports; and prior to that, sourced entirely from slave traders in Africa. All taken out. They even blame the U.S. for times when the U.S. didn't even exist - prior to 1776.
Gun control was a major contributor to the revolution. Taken out decades ago.
The role of wealth redistribution at Plymouth. Taken out a century ago.
Heck, the Founders themselves are largely eliminated at this point. At best students are going to discover the existence of maybe five memorable people. Not the nearly hundred that had major roles.
And additionally, the progressives have erased their own history to prevent us from learning it and using it against them.
If we wanted to actually do something significant with history, we could. However, there are very few citizen historians out there. So the history sits there, unprotected from progressive manipulation. Unused to restore the country.
Progressives are free to cover it up and hide it with impunity. When they're out there removing statues of Abraham Lincoln, its obvious that history is in shambles.
This book, written over a century ago, directly blames Britain for slavery in America, and with good evidence. See chapters 4 and 8.
https://librivox.org/the-wrong-of-slavery-by-robert-dale-owen/
We own it in its original form, but that original form is unknown.
Lie #1: “Enslaved people built our young nation and made possible an economy that would throw off the control of the most powerful country then on earth,...”
My remark was intended sarcasm, parroting that Globalist woman saying that same ohrase but about science.
Schools should just shrivel up and die. Government control of schools is one of Marx’s requirements to lead society into Socialism.
Government run schools should shrivel up and die.
Full disclosure: I have not read the article. Though, I have read a lot of history books, primarily the classics, such as the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, David Hume’s “History of England”, and permit me to say for brevity, several on the specific histories of the individual European nations, including eastern Europe (I used to fly a lot for work and used that time to read).
Let me start by saying “History is written by the victors”. In terms of hard truths, history is pretty much a matter of perspective, and often reflective of the author’s notion of what the “historical facts” are, or were at the time of writing. History is unlike the physical sciences where proofs can be independently verified. Histories are many times written based upon faulty memories, conjecture, and/or sometimes on outright falsehoods.
A good understanding of history requires the consideration of numerous viewpoints, an understanding of the issues, and the culture of the era that is under study. Introducing alternate theories is beneficial, if they are provided for comparison, but not if they become the focal point, and in essence become propaganda.
In short, I don’t thing that anyone can ever “get it right”, given that what is “right” is personalized, and not universally applicable.
“The truth is that at least in my area, Teachers make a darn good living. They do not work nights, week ends, holidays, Summers, and they get 1 week out of 10 off during their 180 day work year. They rarely spend 7 hours at work, and God forbid if it snows out. Their pensions are fantastic as are their health and other benefits.”
So, why didn’t you become a teacher?
American public schools haven’t been teaching actual US History since at least 1865. Just ask that twit Homer Simpson to quote you some of his fairy tales. History is written by the victors, and we’ve handed over that distinction to the leftests, now, just as we handed it to the Yankees a hundred and fifty years ago. Quit yer bitchin.
The public schools don’t have anyone qualified to teach the true American history. The RAT version claims all of our ancestors were homosexuals and drag queens.
They do, indeed, work nights, weekends and holidays grading papers, developing curriculum, writing "measurable objectives" reports for government agencies, etc. They also have to attend classes and workshops to renew their credentials.
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