And I think your memory is amazing. Can we bottle that?
I do remember Ohio history, though. I remember staring at the map of where various tribes lived and seeing none in the northeast, the Western Reserve around Cleveland. Wondering why, but the textbook never explained it. Many years later, I looked up the history and found the area had been depopulated by the Iroquois Six Nations, who sold it to the Connecticut Land Company in 1795. The original people had been the Erie nation, but the Five Nations destroyed them back in the 17th century, and they left the region depopulated as a hunting reserve during the fur trade. When that economic usefulness waned, they sold it to the white man.
At least in my area of SoCal, 4th grade California History lessons are starting to really de-emphasize the missions and friars and starting to tell the kids the truth about systematic enslavement and destruction of the native groups that were here before the Spanish arrived. At least the 4th grade teachers I know are doing it.
Good to hear. When I was in 4th grade in the early 1960s in NorCal they barely mentioned the native groups and made it sound like the padres were helping them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Granted, it’s not a total shift. The kids still make missions out of sugar cubes/Legos/whatever. But there is a definite lack of “Jesus saved the natives.” Junipero Serra is starting to see his statues disappear.
In my school we got no American Indian Ohio history, except for the parts where they fought the United States. That action was over by Toledo. But where I was born and raised, the land had been transferred all peaceful and legal-like, which is nice to know.
I believe mandating a semester module devoted to American Oppression would be productive within the high school American History course. The AO syllabus should include lectures on what is oppression?, the history of oppression in America, why oppression is wrong and counter-productive to society, what are appropriate reparations?, how best to fight oppression, and a lecture or two devoted to each minority that has been oppressed by White Americans (perhaps a second lecture focusing on Black oppression, since it has a longer history), and also a lecture focusing on minority vs. minority bigotry.
The problem with mandating or expanding a course that only focuses on Black Americans is that it isn’t fair to other minorities that have been and continue to be oppressed. If I was a Native American, for example, I would feel this was a slap in the face. A form of oppression itself, or certainly repression.
The main reason we don’t see oppression of Native Americans to the same degree as Black Americans these days is because of their fewer numbers and not living as integrated into white and black society. The oppression of native Americans was equally evil, however. Instead of making Native Americans house and plantation slaves, White Americans’ way of dealing with Native Americans was to shuffle them into reservations, or extermination. That’s why today we don’t see their blight, though it continues. We don’t see it because we killed most of them off.
Oppression is evil. Oppressors are evil. It has no place in a civilized society. Its history should absolutely be taught in high school. I just don’t think the course should focus just on one oppressed group, at the expense of others. And, if the high school schedule can’t afford to add an extra hour to the school day, or bump a core subject off the schedule, then focus on improving the quality of the subject. Quality over quantity.
Because a significant minority of them think that their racist beliefs are not racist at all, but factual. (At least, I hope it’s a minority.) You’re not going to change that with history lessons. The contributions of Black people should be fairly reflected in history teachings, and if that’s not the case today, it should be rectified. I don’t see what’s to be gained by force-feeding Black studies.
Racism directed against Blacks is a subset of racism in general, which in turn is a subset of a larger class of bigotry against a variety of other kinds of minorities – the classic dislike of the “other”. The only way I can think of to deal with all of that is to inculcate in children from an early age the fundamental concepts of inclusiveness, equality, and basic respect for our fellow humans.
I explain in my post. Two quarters make up a semester. We would generally have big tests/projects/papers at the end of each quarter and our grades would be formally recorded each quarter.
Regardless, education is still a necessary, if not sufficient, tool for this kind of thing.
Well, I can’t be certain of its accuracy.
What we were taught in 1981-1982 was a static map showing six nations occupying roughly equal portions of Ohio—Wyandot, Miami, Shawnee, Delaware, Erie, and … Tuscarora? No, Huron, I think—and we were taught the conflict between the local nations and the Iroquois Confederation.
However, I have searched the internet for a map like the one that was in our Ohio history textbook, and I haven’t found one exactly the same, so I suspect it was pretty shaky scholarship. We were also not taught the constant changes as a result of war, disease, deprivation, etc.
We were told with some degree of pride that our high school and the township we lived in was named after General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.
Our teacher also read a passage to us from a popular history book that described in detail the torture of white settlers by natives.
agreed! People’s History of the United States should be taught, then show what has changed in this country, and what has not changed-unfortunately. Democracy is meant for all individuals. What is the problem? is the continued hard push to go backward and not forward on equal rights, holding those accountable for the very evil that has permeated long before this country came into existence. Black studies should be in our high schools along with Civic studies! showing how our govt. works.
I don’t think that anyone in this thread questions that.
What is questioned is the idea of the OP to have courses specifically for Black American history. While on the surface, this seems a reasonable idea, once you get into the details, it starts to fall apart rather quickly.
Rather than have a separate class, which would also mean that the history of Black people in the US wouldn’t generally by covered in “American History” the materials and syllabi for American History should be revised to place more emphasis on including the history of Black people, as they are Americans as well, and their history is part of all of our history.
I don’t disagree, and what I said was not meant in anyway to exclude that. But, that is outside the scope of this particular discussion.
And I don’t mean that to be dismissive, but that the subject of how world history is taught in US schools deserves its own discussion, not a sidebar and hijack to this one. It seems most Americans barely even know there exists a world outside their borders.
How can you possibly imagine that any of this could remotely pose actual educators any problem?
Do you think that a black studies/black history program would require avoiding any mention of white people or things that are part of general American history?
The OP has made it abundantly clear that he or she views American history and Black Studies as completely separate things. Thus the question about how to classify certain events.