History not to be known

I had no idea what to name this thread, or where to post it, it might classify as IMHO or something, since it somewhat asks an opinion, sorry.

Anyway, I was reading about the Firebombing of Dresden earlier today for no particular reason at all (And for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing(and by this sort of thing I mean vacuous devouring firestorms induced by incendiary bombs), and know nothing of it, I suggest you learn at least a little about it) Anyway, it occurs to me that with these webpages listing in a range of 125,000 to over 500,000 deaths in a single night, aside from me clearly not actually knowing anything about it, I couldn’t think of any possible reason aside from hiding the evidence, that there would be for not ever teaching this to American students (And I should know, I am one) at least not in public school, and I was wondering, in addition to anyone who has the ‘real’ information about the Firebombing, what else is ‘omitted’ that you feel ought to be included no question

American history, as presented to high-school students, is heavily edited. The concern is that if the “bad parts” are left in, kids may lose their patriotism, and start to question authority. (As to the OP, many text books also leave out the firebombing of Tokyo.)

Well, my problem is, I would figure that students of a ‘high school’ level wouldn’t lose patriotism any more just from learning more about it, besides it would give them something to compare things happening now to, or at least, ah, anyway, Yes, my text books also left out the Firebombing of Tokyo, and one to anger at least someone, the entire involvement of Russia in WW2 as mentioned in my last History text book was comprised of about an eighth of a page, I feel cheated.

I certainly learned about the firebombing of Dresden while attending a US public high school. Perhaps your school emphasizes the information needed to pass standardized tests, more than it does a balanced education.

Squink, I wouldn’t doubt it, something about a football town, focus on passing rather than learning, what a waste, oh well.

War is awful. what’s your point?

They taught me about Dresden, and Hiroshima as well. And they taught me about other atrocities by the Romans, the Germans and many others.

It’s sad that people kill people, but that’s the nature of war. You just do your best to keep it clean, but ultimately it’s more important to win.

This notion that American history is heavily edited is kinda silly. Yes there are uglinesses that don’t always get presented, and yes as humans, we don’t always want to read about the bad things we’ve done, but the notion that there’s some “Office of Correct Thinking” that goes through textbooks with a red pen before our innocent children get them is nonsense.

A couple of decades back one of the major American news magazines–I don’t recall which, but it was either Time or Newsweek–ran an article on a cranky couple who were making a life’s work of reading textbooks and complaining to the publishers about what they saw as ideological impurities.

Though just two people, and not persons of any social or adademic prominence, they had been surprisingly effective in shaping the teaching of American history to their liking. For instance, a civics textbook had remarked that the Constitution was a living document which had been amended over time to reflect changing values in society. While this is indisputably true, the passage was excised from future editions after this couple complained that teaching this was “subversive”

In addition to these two cranks, publishers must deal with dozens upon dozens of other pressure groups, as well as the collective prejudice and ignorance of society as a whole. The result is an at times oddly unbalanced, circumscribed, censored view of the past.

I remember as a child reading in my 8th-grade history book that the U.S. sent troops to Hawaii to “protect American businessmen” there. That’s one way of putting it; in fact, while Grover Cleaveland had argued that the U. S. should send troops to save the native Hawaiians from the businessmen who had overthrown the constitutional monarchy there, Congress responded by sending Marines to prevent the natives from staging an uprising to take their country back.

In the end, the Queen of Hawaii decided she didn’t want her subjects to shed blood in a futile effort, and ordered them not to fight. They then watched helplessly as the recently installed apartheid-style government of President Dole (of the Pineapple Doles), signed their country over to the U. S. as a colony.

I guess I was in my forties before I learned about that, seeing a documentary on PBS.

I did a little better with the origins of May Day.

Many times I have heard someone venture, as May 1st rolled around, that “it must have something to do with Russian history”. In fact, May Day is recognized around the world as Labor Day, in countries ranging from Communist dictatorships to right-wing military regimes. The reason is because a national strike for an eight hour day, a pivotal event in the development of labor unions, occured in The United States in on May 1st, 1886. There must be schoolchildren around the world who learn that essential piece of American history; I learned it in an MBA program.

The squeemishness of American schools in teaching about slavery and the Civil War are other outstanding examples of how only an extremely limited trickle of information is sometimes allowed on a sensitive subject. I recall that when I was in grade school (the 60s) one got the impression from school books that slavery had been opposed by a mere handful of people led by John Brown, who was obviously a lunatic. It was only a couple of years ago that I read that, in fact, there appears to be no record of any of his contemporaries, even his harshest critics, of having suggested that Brown was crazy.

I also remember an illustrated box in my history textbook showing a picture of a carpetbagger and a scalliwag. I was reminded of it years later when I saw the Woody Allen movie Love and Death; there is a scene where Allen’s character, as a boy, is shown educational cards with pictures of Jews on them by his Orthodox pastor. One of them is wearing prison stripes, and the other has a devil’s horns.

No mention was made of the fact that the so-called carpetbaggers and scalliwags, among other ‘atrocities", abolished debtors’ prisons and established free public education.

This crazy house mirror view of the Civil War was enshrined on film in the 1930 and 40s, as Hollywood sought to make movies which would offended no one (aside from African Americans). There was a film in which Erroll Flynn and Ronald Reagan played West Point classmates–they went on to become Custer and Lee, or other famous generals. In any case, it seemed to be suggested in the film that the Civil War was brought on as a conspiracy of slavery opponents who couldn’t take a joke, led by John Brown, in the form of Raymond Massey at his wild-eyed best.

I recall that after studying the Civil War in grade school many of my classmates were still unsure as to which side had won. This was in St. Louis, where, contrary to what a great many people from elsewhere in the country assume, the natives do not consider themselves to be “down South”.

One classmate of mine, a transplant from Alabama, offered that people “mostly emphasize the bad things about slavery”, and that it “taught people a trade”. By “people”, he did not mean the slave traders. Our teacher did not feel a need to question his statements. It was not until high school (again in St. Louis) that I learned that life as a slave was sort of like a protracted stay at a health spa, as slaves were too expensive for owners to have ever wanted to beat or misuse them.

In short, “political correctness” has been with us for a long time. While the term came into use in the 1980s to describe a kind of extreme dogmatic liberalism, it was often used by people who were offended by challenges to their dogmatic, rigidly enforced prejudice and ignorance.

American History is a broad topic and any textbook is going to have to condense and leave a lot out. You’d be more likely to learn about any specific battle in a book on military history, especially one that concentrated on WWII. Don’t ever expect to get a true history of anything from one book, let alone one chapter. Other books will concentrate on the politics of the era, or the technology or the literature, etc.

I first learned about the bombing of Dresden by reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s science fiction, but the portrayal of those particular events matches what I’ve read about it since then.

Actually, there sort of is.

Here’s one article.

The Gablers include in their guidelines for textbooks that these should “encourage loyalty” and avoid “defaming” the nations founders, and avoid material that might lead students to criticize his or her parents. In one of Mel’s creepiest statements, he criticized textbooks saying, “Too many textbooks and discussions leave students free to make up their mind about things.”

(See the lengthy section on the Gablers in James Loewen’s * Lies My Teacher Taught Me.) *

High-school history is pathetic. (As a college history professor once said to me, “The first thing I tell my freshman students is to forget everything they learned in high-school.”) There are glaring omissions, and mistakes are glossed over. Kids never learn the truth about some of the horrible things that happened in the past.

I think that it’s important for kids to know these things. I know once I started reading books on history outside of what I was taught in the classroom, I was angry. I felt I had been lied to for twelve years.

Sadly, the efforts to make history a happy and patriotic parade of our founding fathers as Paragons of Virtue also makes history boring. It doesn’t need to be. One can still remain patriotic while knowing the truth-- lying to kids can have the opposite effect. History is routinely the least favorite subject of kids, and most adults never read another book on history once they graduate. History courses kill interest in the past.

But the truth is fascinating. Yes, mistakes were made, and some of what our government did is distasteful, but we can learn from that. Making our founding fathers into sinless people robs them of their humanity. Kids cannot identify with saints-- but they can identify and look up to flawed people who overcame their shortcomings to accomplish great things. I can acknowledge the darkness of the past and still admire what our nation has become. How we corrected those mistakes and tried to improve our country should be an important part of history, instead of sweeping our errors under the proverbial rug.

My point is that it should be taught as universally awful, not that everybody but the Americans commit atrocities

And maybe I was too hasty saying all American history, however, the school system in this town, and very many here in North Central Texas do follow a heavily edited path, so, then perhaps that part of the question is more along the lines of why would a school system teach in such a manner, of course, this will be answered by someone who doesn’t realize that I’m not asking again, so, let me just say here that it was simply restating the question to point out where I’d said wrong .)

Look, there are plenty of SIGs interested in influencing education in what they see as a positive way. For every christ-freak wanting to put creationism in a science book, there’s a lesbian wanting to throw overstated historical triumphs by women into the history books. There are plenty of examples on every front, not just left and right, but for every special interest known of influence into our educational system.

And guess what? I think that’s good. It’s checks-and-balances. And it keeps things on average pretty good. Yeah, there’s exceptions. But everybody watches this stuff (our taught history), and everybody voices their opinion, and everybody votes, and everybody has their own kids that consume it, and it all works out ok.

I honestly don’t see how someone could feel lied to after reading non-school books. You got a pretty middle-of-the-road reading, almost by definition.

And frankly, I’m pretty proud of how our country does it by freely throwing the process to the people. You want to see real suppression of truth in history, I can point you at plenty of countries that truly do twist history books to their benefit.

And while I’m ranting, I just want to say that I for one can’t see how anybody could define May Day as “an essential piece of American history”. You wanna talk revisionism… Defining May Day as “essential” (i.e. it absolutely must go in every American history book with the expectation that something else will fall out)… if that ain’t lopsided history reinvention, I don’t know what is.

I don’t feel lied to, I just feel that some fairly important pieces of history have been left out, I mean, they aren’t key issues or anything, but moreso, its the prinicpal of the thing, I definately understand the reasons why they’re left out, it just seems off, to each his own .) Anyhow, the real question I was asking was what else that people felt everyone should know about is ‘typically’ omitted, I didn’t really expect to draw this much attention to the omitting itself haha, ah well, you get what you get, thanks for such lively responses.

Do a search on “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and “James W. Loewen” for several threads in which we endlessly rehash these matters.

Well, Crakmine, this is a wonderful realization: you now know that to be educated, you must educate yourself. The quality of your education is not up to your school board, principal, superintendent, teacher, football coach, guidance counselor, parents, or anyone else but YOU. Go to it, friend, and the rewards will equal your efforts.

In defense of high school history teachers, I do recall mine did try to introduce topics that were new or challenging - but how much can one learn in a school year? I do think some of them did their best to inspire curiosity in us. I do think they tried rather hard to break away from the restraints that rather conservative* school boards and teachers would place on the curriculum.

  • By conservative I don’t mean politically conservative, but rather a narrow emphasis on learning textbook history by rote to fulfill basic skills and testing requirements .

This seems to be more of a debate than a search for facts, so I’ll move this thread to Great Debates.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

What worries me is that school textbooks are about the only books that a large proportion of people will ever read - I mean by that that they don’t read books after they leave school.

Beacuse of this it’s very important that the history, science etc that they learn in school is balanced (I don’t believe that opposing SIGs equates to balance) and that the main lesson that students learn is that they should question things and seek knowledge for themselves.

I don’t know anyone teaching who thinks that students who won’t do outside reading can do well.

And I learned about all the atrocities mentioned here in a crappy, football-happy school.

Ever since I got a look at Virginia’s hilariously named SOLs, I’ve given up on the prospect of ever being able to discuss history with a Virginia public school educated high schooler.

Here’s the complete, as best I can tell, requirements for a secondary student’s understanding of World War II. Since this is a government document I think I can quote it in its (brief) entirety:

Notice that neither the strategy nor the tactics of the war are to be discussed at all, and the China/Burma/India theater seems to be left out entirely. I fully realize that this crap invariably has to be crammed down apathetic students’ throats in a couple of hours at the end of the term, but World War II is still one of the most important and relevant teaching tools for understanding the world today–if you ask me, anyway. It’s a shame that it’s not used as a more instructive example.

I’d agree with you if both sides had an equal shot, but text book editors tend to err on the side of “caution.” Things are getting better with regards to the inclusion of women and minorities in history texts, but there’s just no way to make everyone happy. There is a large percentage of those in the History Wars who want things to remain exactly as they were, and see any efforts at including minorities as PC brain-washing.

Unfortunately, texts often have factual errors or omissions. History texts are rarely written by real historians, even though their name may grace the cover. Usually, they’re written by a team of editors who may actually know little about history. This site claims that over five thousand errors were found in state text books.

As James Loewen puts it, accuracy in textbooks is not seen as being as important as making kids “feel good about America.” He says that advertisments for textbooks never say that this book is more accurate than its predecessors, but that the books are more colorful, have a better lay-out and will teach kids to love our country.

My main problem is that it seems that history is seen more as a tool of indocrination than a serious academic study. I do disagree with, as you put it throwing overstated historical triumphs by women into the books, because I disagree with history having any political or idealogical agenda. To me, history should be honest, straightforward and unflinching. We should trust kids to make up their minds about things, despite what Mel Gabler believes. It’s important to teach kids to think critically, and what better way than class discussion over the decisions our country has made in the past?

History shouldn’t be presented as a parade of dates and names. Is it more important for a child to know the date the Civil War started, or the causes behind it? (Loewen again.) While some dates are important, to understand the roots of historical incidents is more so.