6 ms·

Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year. Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly skewed caricature of history that leaves out cert

Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year. Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly skewed caricature of history that leaves out certain "inconvenient truths." This is also an overcorrection.

oneplane 6y ago
Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?
- monocasa 6y ago
  Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    That's not the opposite of what I wrote above. That's merely another kind of overcorrection!
    - monocasa 6y ago
      I'm seeing a much more nuanced and complete understanding of history out of children these days than what was taught to me is my point, in contrast to what you're saying. Can you give some specific examples?
      - parineum 6y ago
        Not the parent but I can see where you're both coming from. I think there's a lot more in depth look at US history, specifically the warts, than when I was a kid but I also think there's a lot less pre-US American history where the focus would be on _why_ the founding fathers were (partially) great men. That seems like an over correction to me and I think that it shows in the push to tear down monuments of great people in American history who were largely products of their time. For example, it's hard to overstate how important it was that George Washington gave up the presidency. He set the stage for the peaceful transition of power in the US and even the world. But he also was a rich guy who owned slaves. It's not nuance that's missing, it's the concept of duality.
        monocasa 6y ago
        What makes you think they're not being taught that still?
        stcredzero 6y ago
        I hope they are, but yet some large number of people who want to post stuff online are promulgating a ridiculous one-sided view. That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery, and thus all of that wealth should be given over. The fact that this sort of dreck isn't widely debunked and ridiculed whenever it appears is kind of mind boggling. Yes, some very bad things happened. But by the same token, the founding fathers weren't B-movie villains doing bad things for the evulz!
        monocasa 6y ago
        > That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery I mean, all of that is true. Nobody thinks that the founding fathers were B movie villains, only that they were overwhelmingly a set of people looking to maintain and increase their power leveraging their ability to own people like cattle, and steal land from the people who were already here as an economic concentrate and multiplier. Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be. I'd recommend An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard as a introduction into how the constitution was designed to reinforce the power structures holding up the people who wrote it.
        stcredzero 6y ago
        I mean, all of that is true. For the US as a whole? No way! If it were true, the economic might of the South would have overwhelmed the North. The opposite was true. Slavery held the South back, economically. You've been fed some propaganda lies, there! You can't even get slaves to reliably do high value-add work which requires attention to detail, even on pain of death. It turns out that to do this sustainably, you pay them bomuses. This was especially the case in the US South. Certainly the Germans found this out as well, in the 1940's. (Through failure, in that case.) (Skeptical? Read yourself some books by distinguished African American economist Thomas Sowell, then get back to me. He used to be a Marxist, then became disillusioned and started debunking their lies and deceptions. Think about it, if slavery were some miraculous universal engine of productivity, wouldn't startups be doing it?) Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be. Sure. However, throwing out certain principles which make our society great will hold us back and throw us further backwards as well. Instead of being told the truth about how civics really works in the US, students are being propagandized against this.
  - oneplane 6y ago
    Isn't there some sort of vetting and accreditation system that would prevent that type of 'creative' stuff from getting in to an educational system?
    - monocasa 6y ago
      The United Daughters of the Confederacy had embedded themselves in the vetting and accreditation system specifically to get this outcome. https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-conf...
- stcredzero 6y ago
  Well over 90% of people those ages I interacted with online are for throwing out principles like Free Speech and innocent until proven guilty -- it just depends on the context for them. To understand those principles, it's necessary to understand their historical origins. Virtually none of the young people in such conversations understood those things and none of them cared. All basically responded to such information as if it was trash. Stuff like, the Magna Carta and The Bill of Rights.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    You need to find new online circles. I know if no young kids who are against free speech and innocent until proven guilty. But they also feel like they don’t “personally” need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
    - stcredzero 6y ago
      But they also feel like they don’t “personally” need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If you dig deep enough, for far too many of them, this amounts to either taking away certain means of speech from people they disagree with, or exercising pressure through getting people fired, or through nasty allegations. This is exactly the same sort of extra-legal thing which homophobic societies did to homosexuals. It's the same thing that used to happen to Jewish people, even in the 20th century in the US. It's the same thing that used to happen to Chinese in San Francisco, when they as good as let Chinatown burn down. It's underhanded stuff that happened to my immigrant parents. It's not that far removed from unsavory things that happened to me in locker rooms and on the street because of my perceived race or my perceived sexual orientation. Forcing people to not speak through fear or through unconsented force isn't winning an argument. It's oppression through extra-legal means. It's using exactly the ugliness practiced by bigots of the past. It's what I find that far too many young people advocate, and strangely label as "virtuous." How is it, that people can be like this, then be surprised when there's no societal unity? Does that even make sense? Principles aren't legalisms to be followed by the letter of the law. They should be reflected in the attitudes and manifestly practiced values of a truly virtuous society.
- franga2000 6y ago
  Small sample, since I come from a country of only 2M people, but there's a growing number of people, including historians and history teachers, that are trying to rewrite WW2 history by framing the Nazi-collaborating groups as the good guys, fighting for our country to rid us of the communist evil that was the liberation front - and everyone is just eating it up. The ordinary people risking their lives to fight literal Nazis are now depicted as the "aggressors" and the people that marched on our own cities under Hitler's flag are the good guys?? Why, because the mere idea of communists doing something good is so dangerous to neoliberalist society that we'd rather call literal Nazis the good guys??? But if you say "communism bad, they fought communists => they were the good guys" and conveniently fail to mention the whole Nazi-collaborating thing, no student will question it because they really don't care anyways. // Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but yes, there's definitely a lack of understanding of history in schools these days and certainly some pretty powerful propaganda
ajmadesc 6y ago
Thisis a baseless claim. Personal experience doesn't count. The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts committed in the name of American Capital interests.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts committed in the name of American Capital interests. Actually, the overwhelming impression I have of the "US history" in the minds of young people, is summed up by that very sentence. However, real history is always nuanced and complex. I certainly wouldn't disagree that bad things have happened in the name of US power. However, the actual history isn't that one-sided. And often, it's that one-sided skew which is then used to justify throwing out principles like due process and innocent until proven guilty.
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26614482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26614482.

oneplane 6y ago

Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?

monocasa 6y ago
Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  That's not the opposite of what I wrote above. That's merely another kind of overcorrection!
  - monocasa 6y ago
    I'm seeing a much more nuanced and complete understanding of history out of children these days than what was taught to me is my point, in contrast to what you're saying. Can you give some specific examples?
    - parineum 6y ago
      Not the parent but I can see where you're both coming from. I think there's a lot more in depth look at US history, specifically the warts, than when I was a kid but I also think there's a lot less pre-US American history where the focus would be on _why_ the founding fathers were (partially) great men. That seems like an over correction to me and I think that it shows in the push to tear down monuments of great people in American history who were largely products of their time. For example, it's hard to overstate how important it was that George Washington gave up the presidency. He set the stage for the peaceful transition of power in the US and even the world. But he also was a rich guy who owned slaves. It's not nuance that's missing, it's the concept of duality.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        What makes you think they're not being taught that still?
        stcredzero 6y ago
        I hope they are, but yet some large number of people who want to post stuff online are promulgating a ridiculous one-sided view. That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery, and thus all of that wealth should be given over. The fact that this sort of dreck isn't widely debunked and ridiculed whenever it appears is kind of mind boggling. Yes, some very bad things happened. But by the same token, the founding fathers weren't B-movie villains doing bad things for the evulz!
        monocasa 6y ago
        > That the United States is essentially a slave state, and that all of the wealth was created on the backs of slavery I mean, all of that is true. Nobody thinks that the founding fathers were B movie villains, only that they were overwhelmingly a set of people looking to maintain and increase their power leveraging their ability to own people like cattle, and steal land from the people who were already here as an economic concentrate and multiplier. Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be. I'd recommend An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard as a introduction into how the constitution was designed to reinforce the power structures holding up the people who wrote it.
        stcredzero 6y ago
        I mean, all of that is true. For the US as a whole? No way! If it were true, the economic might of the South would have overwhelmed the North. The opposite was true. Slavery held the South back, economically. You've been fed some propaganda lies, there! You can't even get slaves to reliably do high value-add work which requires attention to detail, even on pain of death. It turns out that to do this sustainably, you pay them bomuses. This was especially the case in the US South. Certainly the Germans found this out as well, in the 1940's. (Through failure, in that case.) (Skeptical? Read yourself some books by distinguished African American economist Thomas Sowell, then get back to me. He used to be a Marxist, then became disillusioned and started debunking their lies and deceptions. Think about it, if slavery were some miraculous universal engine of productivity, wouldn't startups be doing it?) Treating them as infallible gods who were uncompromisingly dedicated to the public good holds our country back from what it could be. Sure. However, throwing out certain principles which make our society great will hold us back and throw us further backwards as well. Instead of being told the truth about how civics really works in the US, students are being propagandized against this.
- oneplane 6y ago
  Isn't there some sort of vetting and accreditation system that would prevent that type of 'creative' stuff from getting in to an educational system?
  - monocasa 6y ago
    The United Daughters of the Confederacy had embedded themselves in the vetting and accreditation system specifically to get this outcome. https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-conf...
stcredzero 6y ago
Well over 90% of people those ages I interacted with online are for throwing out principles like Free Speech and innocent until proven guilty -- it just depends on the context for them. To understand those principles, it's necessary to understand their historical origins. Virtually none of the young people in such conversations understood those things and none of them cared. All basically responded to such information as if it was trash. Stuff like, the Magna Carta and The Bill of Rights.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  You need to find new online circles. I know if no young kids who are against free speech and innocent until proven guilty. But they also feel like they don’t “personally” need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    But they also feel like they don’t “personally” need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If you dig deep enough, for far too many of them, this amounts to either taking away certain means of speech from people they disagree with, or exercising pressure through getting people fired, or through nasty allegations. This is exactly the same sort of extra-legal thing which homophobic societies did to homosexuals. It's the same thing that used to happen to Jewish people, even in the 20th century in the US. It's the same thing that used to happen to Chinese in San Francisco, when they as good as let Chinatown burn down. It's underhanded stuff that happened to my immigrant parents. It's not that far removed from unsavory things that happened to me in locker rooms and on the street because of my perceived race or my perceived sexual orientation. Forcing people to not speak through fear or through unconsented force isn't winning an argument. It's oppression through extra-legal means. It's using exactly the ugliness practiced by bigots of the past. It's what I find that far too many young people advocate, and strangely label as "virtuous." How is it, that people can be like this, then be surprised when there's no societal unity? Does that even make sense? Principles aren't legalisms to be followed by the letter of the law. They should be reflected in the attitudes and manifestly practiced values of a truly virtuous society.
franga2000 6y ago
Small sample, since I come from a country of only 2M people, but there's a growing number of people, including historians and history teachers, that are trying to rewrite WW2 history by framing the Nazi-collaborating groups as the good guys, fighting for our country to rid us of the communist evil that was the liberation front - and everyone is just eating it up. The ordinary people risking their lives to fight literal Nazis are now depicted as the "aggressors" and the people that marched on our own cities under Hitler's flag are the good guys?? Why, because the mere idea of communists doing something good is so dangerous to neoliberalist society that we'd rather call literal Nazis the good guys??? But if you say "communism bad, they fought communists => they were the good guys" and conveniently fail to mention the whole Nazi-collaborating thing, no student will question it because they really don't care anyways. // Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but yes, there's definitely a lack of understanding of history in schools these days and certainly some pretty powerful propaganda

ajmadesc 6y ago

Thisis a baseless claim. Personal experience doesn't count. The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts committed in the name of American Capital interests.

stcredzero 6y ago
The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts committed in the name of American Capital interests. Actually, the overwhelming impression I have of the "US history" in the minds of young people, is summed up by that very sentence. However, real history is always nuanced and complex. I certainly wouldn't disagree that bad things have happened in the name of US power. However, the actual history isn't that one-sided. And often, it's that one-sided skew which is then used to justify throwing out principles like due process and innocent until proven guilty.

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26614482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26614482.