In "The Curious Case of American Hegemony," David Hendrickson writes, "That messianic and Manichean perspective makes us blind to the misgivings and fears of others, incapable of understanding how our way of war generates intense resentment and hatred, and as ready to misread enemy intentions as to view contemptibly the advice of friends."
Underlying cultural assumptions manifest our indoctrination. In "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which topped the bestseller charts this year, Mark Levin writes, "The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely and pursue that which motivates us." Levin objects to "Statists" who teach the fact that our country was founded upon slavery.
Or, as David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last Friday, "Jefferson advocated 'a wise and frugal government' that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and 'shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.'"
Similarly, last month I wrote that we should be horrified our government is violating some of the Nuremberg Principles, which were enshrined after World War II explicitly to prevent countries from committing the crimes of fascist Germany and Japan. Judd Smith, a senior political science major, wrote a letter to the editor saying he was "thoroughly disgusted," not that our country is violating Nuremberg Principles, but that someone pointed it out.
The history SOLs stop in 1991. How much relevance can a study of history have without knowledge of current events?
A graduating student would be obedient to nationalism, indoctrinated to a cleansed history, and unaware of current events. This brainwashing is probably internalized in the test makers as objectivity or benevolence. The system is working exactly as it was designed.
Sociology professor Joyce Rothschild said, "If K-12 schools simply parrot the nonsense and talking points that are on TV, then it is hard to see where children might gain any real insight into the history and causes of the important challenges we face as a nation and as one world."
In George Orwell's "1984," government censors throw incriminating news clippings into trash chutes called memory holes, which connect to an incinerator. Censorship is much more open in Virginia.
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Burke, you forget that most famous of quotations, "History is written by the winners." Perhaps we ought also to look at the American Revolution from the eyes of King George III, at the French Revolution from the point of view of the French ruling classes, at the Russian Revolution from the perspective of the deposed Czar, his family, and the Russian proletariat . . .the list goes on and on. Part and parcel of American history is the uniquely American point of view which caused the nation to develop, in fits and spurts, into the nation it has become today. Why is it that you presume that your version of events is the 'correct' one? Keep in mind that, up until shortly before the American Revolution, nearly every major European power had legalized slavery in some form or another. A practice worthy of criticism? Certainly - but only in a non-historical context. Future generations will undoubtably judge ours and our morals as supremely deficient by their own standards - but the study of history demands an understanding of events in the time in which they occur.
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That doesn't imply that we have to approve of them 'in the here and now,' but it also doesn't imply offering the sort of historical anecdotes (and many of your annotations amount to little more than anecdotal historical tidbits) intended to do little more than show off how 'enlightened' we are today. If we were actually enlightened, I'd buy your argument. But the fact is, we aren't.
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Kyle has a really good point here, we can't judge the past with today's values. What seems clearly wrong to us today was simply happenstance in the colonial period. They didn't see anything wrong with what was going on, just like how 300 years from now we will be judged by future generations and most likely vilified for actions we wouldn't give a second thought.
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"Their history of the Civil War deviates from preferred methodologies; it is the only war when students are made to look at the perspectives of soldiers from both sides." That's because the soldiers on both sides were Amercians. Or are you too dense to have figured this out on your own? I'm am grateful Mr. Thomas is not in charge of my children's history curriculae. Were he, I'd have two kids who were thouroughly embarrassed to be Americans and ashamed of their father, seeing how I've apparently committed genocide in Afghanistan and Iraq and wear the same uniform as centuries of oppressors.
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