# So, how exactly do history/civics classes proceed in red states? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 12, 2020, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542 "2020-06-12T15:39:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/21 "2020-06-13T01:39:40Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Calling Manda Jo? > > She is quite expert on all matters educational, and IIRC, I was surprised to recently see she was from Texas (which has an astounding effect on textbook contents.) For what it’s worth, the internet has really undermined all that. I don’t know any teacher who really teaches from a book: we teach to a set of standards, or learning objectives, or whatever, and use the book when it makes that easier. But very often it makes more sense to make your own resources, working with stuff that you find on-line. In the last few years I’ve taught English Rhetoric, Government, Economics, and Human Geography and I never used a textbook even once for any of them. The closest I came was assigning some Khan Academy stuff in Government. Most textbooks are bloated with irrelevant stuff, hard to read, and heavy. I think I’m more the norm than the exception, at least in the humanities. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/22 "2020-06-13T03:32:43Z")
Not to mention old. The book they expect me to use stops with the first W. Administration. I make it a point to tell my students my political views. That way they know the spin I will even unconsciously add to things. They also know that as long as they can defend their positions, I’ve never graded a student down because they disagree with me. (It actually might be safer to take a contrary position, because I would be so aware of the chance of favoritism that they’d get away with lousy logic.) (Don’t tell them that!) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/23 "2020-06-13T13:49:51Z")
I used to work with a lady (actually, former student!) who would say to her government class “I’m not going to tell you my views, but I’m a 25 year old black woman with two moms who went to college in California, and if you can’t make any inferences from that, you really weren’t paying attention in the demographics and voting patterns unit!” ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/24 "2020-06-13T14:07:08Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > From my experiences with my kids in school in Missouri, they emphasize different things and even cover different material than schools in CA or OR. My kids were in elementary school at the time, so they didn’t get into too much of the actual documents. They did however learn all about 9/11 and the towers falling, and who was bad. They were taught a few other things, non-civics related, that I had to un-do, like being gay is unnatural. It’s also the first place where my son was called a nigger, so there’s that. > > I have to say that I appreciated the 9/11 talk. On the West Coast, it seems to have slipped from memory. We have family connections to 2 of the flights. It’s not a day that I will forget, and the consequences are still playing out today. > > My summary would be that there is more emphasis on how fantastic America is, with a big dose of religious influence. Was this rural Missouri? Because, as was posted above, all states are pretty diverse especially when you get to urban/suburban areas. I ask because my public school elementary kids in the STL area have (so far) had a much different experience - no religious talk to speak of and definitely nothing about homosexuality being unnatural. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/25 "2020-06-13T16:57:56Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I grew up in Philly in 40s and 50s. One thing we were taught is that the US never started a war and never lost a war. What about 1812? There was no discussion of the provocation of both sides, and it was mentioned that Washington was burned, but it was asserted that the US won. The view here in Canada is different. Then there is the Spanish-American war, but they slid over that. > > In accordance with state law, 10 verses of the bible were read at the start of every day. Always old testament in my schools. And evolution was a given in biology classes. I went to school in the 1950’s in a then-rural area in New York State, and in the 50’s and 60’s in Maine and Massachusetts. I didn’t get the bible. Evolution was taken for granted. But I did get taught, basically, that the United States Did No Wrong; with the possible exception of slavery, which was Over. Some years after I got out of school, there was a commotion (I don’t remember which one) in which people in one or more countries in South America were talking about being afraid of being invaded by the United States. My first reaction was ‘what are they going on about? The USA doesn’t go around invading countries in South America!’ Then, I don’t remember how as this was pre-internet, possibly at a library, I looked it up. Oh. Yes, yes indeed we do. – how did those schools deal with current events? Mostly by not mentioning them. Somehow the history classes always ran out of time left in the school year sometime before WWII (which was relatively recent history at the time.) So I think the problem existed in various states, including northern ones. Possibly in all states. > [@MandaJo](#): > > I think you are underestimating how stupid\* children are Somewhat of a nitpick, because I do know what you mean: but ignorance and stupidity aren’t the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/26 "2020-06-13T17:10:39Z")
They aren’t just ignorant. They process more slowly, and differently, than adults. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/27 "2020-06-13T17:48:07Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Not necessarily. All I know is that there seems to be a disconnect somewhere between what our Constitution says, and how people do their civic duties in _practice_, otherwise Trump wouldn’t be in the White House. > > My core question is why, if these facts & principles are indeed taught openly & comprehensively, with little to no distortion or bias on the part of the instructor, why it then seems to have relatively little effect on the young minds as they become adults & are eligible to vote. I’m not sure, if the effect is indeed small, if this means that schooling (in general) isn’t an effective way to obtain an electorate of enlightened citizens, or to have any positive philosophical impact of whatever sort (in whatever realm you care to name). Which, if true, then leads to whether _anything_ would be effective to that aim. So, do you really want to know how history is taught in red states or are you taking this opportunity to say how stupid every Trump supporter is? I’ll assume the former. First, we spent nowhere near a month going over the Constitution and DOI. Maybe two class periods at the most. But to take your four examples: 1. all men are created equal. It is said that it was an ideal that was not realized at the time. Over the years we have come closer to including all people including blacks, and women and Indians into that fold. Still some work to be done but our founding document attempts to recognize all of us as equal. 2. Equal protection clause. It’s main purpose was to undo the black codes that SC and LA tried to pass after the civil war. Doesn’t allow a state to say if a black man does this it is one punishment, but if a white does it it is a different punishment. No way could a high school class study the equal protection clause. It takes a month by itself in law school and it still is a murky area. 3. peaceable assembly; petition for redress. Pretty simple. You are allowed to gather together and say whatever you want, even if the government doesn’t like it. You and others can sign a petition and send it to the government telling them they need to do something. 4. slavery amendment. We had slavery and now we don’t because of this amendment. You discuss a wink and nod as if anyone disagrees with this basic stuff. Do you think there is a school district in the country that teaches that slavery was a good thing or that equality is bullshit and that only white men should have any power? That’s such a ridiculous strawman and frankly insulting, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you to perhaps rephrase your question for a better answer. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/28 "2020-06-13T18:10:48Z")
I went to high school in the early 90s and went to a public school in central New Hampshire. My school had two tiers of US History–the AP(Advance Placement) course for gifted students and the General course for everyone else. I was in the General course mostly because I was too lazy to do actual schoolwork. Frankly my teacher spent so much time just give on us factual information and keeping everyone focused that he basically glossed over everything. And a full month just going over the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution? I think we have may spent a week on it. I sure know we didn’t going each and every article and amendment and discuss them individually. I have never heard of a high school class spending that much time examining them. I don’t remember exactly how far we got on the textbook by the end of the year; I think we got as far as the First World War. I remember talking to my teacher afterwards and said they deliberately tried to spread the course so they wouldn’t have to cover the Vietnam War era because they didn’t want offend any Hippies or Vietnam vets who were parents(remember this was the early 90s). And far as students forgetting that seems to be pretty common. I lost count of how many times I mentioned something we "learned’ in class to my classmate at a later date and they forgot about it or misunderstood what was said. I admit the people I hung around with weren’t the most academically inclined; none of them went on to college. They mostly went directly into the workforce after graduating and are still doing blue-collar jobs 25+ years later. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/29 "2020-06-13T18:37:23Z")
I attended public elementary school in Georgia (1966-1972), definitely red state, and junior high and high school in New Mexico, specifically Los Alamos (1973-1977) in an era when New Mexico in general was more red than blue and Los Alamos more so than (say) Albuquerque or Santa Fe. They don’t see the inconsistency. In Georgia I was taught that we had _freedom of religion_, that the government, unlike colonial governments which often had a faith that you had to be a part of or be driven off your land etc, and unlike the English government, was not allowed to impose a state religion. That meant you could be Episcopalian or Baptist or Presbyterian, it didn’t matter. You could even be Catholic! Or even Jewish!! Then after lunch break our teacher would have us put our heads down on our desks and she read to us for an hour from the Bible. And each classroom put on a “school play” each year and the other classes would come to attend, and they _always_ had a theme derived from the Bible. We sang songs listing the books of the Old and New Testaments, the better to remember them by. We did Noah and the birdies coming to say “nope, no land yet”. We did Solomon mediating between the two women claiming the same child, and opting to slice the kiddie in two to observe the women’s reaction. We sang hymns. Oh, that reminds me, “Faith of Our Fathers” was struck from one such pageant. We’d been rehearsing it (and I liked it a lot better than the kiddie-songs about “Who built the ark, noah, noah…”) but the teacher said we weren’t going to do it after all because to some parents it was associated with the _ **Catholic** _ church and, umm, that just wouldn’t go over well. No one complained of cognitive dissonance. We learned that we had _freedom!_ We had _rights!_ We were the country where the government was _of, by, and for the people!_ We had had a _revolution against oppression_ already! Other countries looked to _us_ as the beacon of hope and liberty and all that! Then current events and the events of recent years would be discussed, like people being locked up for using marijuana or the civil rights marches of the 60s and how the police had behaved. Our presence in Vietnam and the often-violent police reaction to the protesters, not to mention the attitudes in much of the country that those ungrateful hippie kids had _no right_ to be making trouble like that and deserved whatever happened to them… Each individual example of how things here did _not_ match what we’d been taught about our nation was either treated as a) Yes that was bad but it was an exception, and as you see we moved beyond it and the side of freedom and justice triumphed; or b) Oh but for some poorly explained reason that’s Different and well you know we need the police to protect us from communists, anarchists, hedonists, drug users, people who want to undermine our government, yadda yadda, so somehow _that doesn’t count_, we didn’t mean _that_ when we said we had rights and freedoms and stuff. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2020, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/30 "2020-06-14T03:45:48Z")
I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. Attended private Montessori school for four years in elementary school, spent one year in school in France, and for all other years attended public schools in Lexington. > [@John DiFool](#): > > So my question is: do history teachers in these places gloss over the philosophical underpinnings of our founding documents? No. When studying American history in 10th grade and again when studying American literature in 11th grade, we read portions of Locke and Hume and possibly others; I don’t recall perfectly. We read personal letters of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and John Adams. We dissected the wording of the Declaration of Independence and parts of the Constitution and discussed how they related to the philosophical texts we had read. We looked a little bit at the debate among historians regarding how much the founding fathers acted for personal benefit vs. philosophical conviction. I don’t imagine many high school classes could go beyond that, so I don’t see how it could be dismissed as “glossing over”. > [@](#): > > Do they go over each amendment (and expect the student to regurgitate it onto a quiz/test), then do a sort of subtle wink wink nudge nudge somehow, implying to them that that ain’t really how it is, or should be, class? No. > [@](#): > > Or do the students simply forget all of that [cordon it off from the rest of their mind] the instant they walk out the door as they proceed to go and throw racial/sexist slurs at the nearest available target? No. I heard not a single racial slur during my time growing up in Kentucky. As for sexist remarks I heard a few, though only among all-boy groups, never used to harass girls. I doubt it’s much different among typical high school boys anywhere. > [@](#): > > I am basically looking for a factual answer as to how such classes proceed [GQ], but also would thus appreciate some first hand experience [IMHO], with the ultimate end being whether it is healthy for such classes to be as putatively divergent as they might be [GD], or, conversely, if they are taught competently & accurately by their instructor, why it seems to have little to no effect on their charges. You seem to be assuming certain negative stereotypes of “red states” and the people who live in them. Those stereotypes are false. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2020, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/31 "2020-06-14T04:33:09Z")
Your premise is faulty. You’re missing something fundamental about racist conservatives. By and large, they don’t believe they are being racist. So reading those things is not remotely a stumbling block. They believe that they are treating all men equally. They agree slavery is wrong. There’s no reason whatsoever for the things you quoted not to be taught. You have to go a lot deeper to find differences. Probably the most obvious is that I was actually taught some “War Between the States” nonsense. I also remember that we never really went in depth about anything after WWII–the teacher usually saying there wasn’t time. Of course, I can’t directly compare what I learned to what is learned in purple or blue states, as I don’t know what you learned. But I do know we learned mostly white people history. I do know that racism was never really something we were taught about, beyond the simplistic stuff you learn as young kids. I know that we covered slavery more in how it was important to certain political events–slave states/free states, the Civil War, the economy of the South, etc, but not in a way that told us what it was like. And, well, we didn’t have any outside influence to help us fill in the gaps of what we didn’t learn, which I suspect is not the case in more blue areas. I don’t even mean blue states–I mean more urban areas, too. More blue areas tend to have more diversity, so you actually see the real world consequences. That said, **Velocity** is right that young people tend to actually be more liberal these days. I do think there is a slightly bluer bend to schools in most red states. But I think the bigger deal is educational television for my age group, and the Internet for the generation after me. That’s why we seem to have accelerated. But a “red state” is defined by its voters, and there still is a huge problem with getting younger people to vote. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2020, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/32 "2020-06-14T04:36:13Z")
I grew up in a red state. I don’t think our history classes were any different (although we were a northern state in the civil war) However biology class in high school totally skipped evolution as an education topic. And even in college when they taught us evolution the teacher had to go into a discussion about how evolution doesn’t disprove god or religion before starting the lesson. I would hope more civilized parts of the country avoid that stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2020, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542/33 "2020-06-14T04:37:13Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > I hear in red states high schools to celebrate the start of every school day they pick out a random minority and beat them. You say that as a joke, but the two albino kids at our school got treated pretty badly. Albinos are technically a minority. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-how-exactly-do-history-civics-classes-proceed-in-red-states/855542.md?page=1)