5 ms·
I suspect that anything in living memory of the people who approve the textbooks doesn’t look like “history” to them, and also runs the risk of being considered
by kd5bjo 6y ago
I suspect that anything in living memory of the people who approve the textbooks doesn’t look like “history” to them, and also runs the risk of being considered overly political— it can be hard to be objective about events you lived through, so any stance the curriculum writers take will be attacked by the parents and grandparents that were on the other side if the issues.
- leetcrew 6y agoI think there's definitely some of that to it, similar to /r/askhistorians "twenty year" rule. older events/topics can still be very controversial though. I went to high school very close to the mason-dixon line. there were a lot of parents who believed the civil war was primarily about states' rights, and some were very upset at the school's coverage of the civil war and european colonialism/imperialism. I get that schools (especially private schools) ultimately need to satisfy the parents, but it strikes me as a massive disservice that my peers and I were able to graduate high school without learning a single thing to contextualize the two defining current events of our childhood: 9/11 and the iraq war. the film charlie wilson's war was the best explanation I got until I was in college.