What the hell does that have to do with anything ?!
[hijack]
This is ridiculous! It’s part of the curriculum of the history classes in the secondary schools (we dedicated almost an entire year to the Nazi regime and the Holocaust was prominently featured), many schools also include the Holocaust in their German as well as ethics/philosophy/religion classes.
My younger daughter learned about the Holocaust even in elementary school.
Given the poor state of some schools and a lack of money in all public schools, it’s possible that a small minority of pupils is never taught about the Holocaust properly.
That an exchange student from an, I assume, academic high school missed it during his years and years of education is unlikely. His claim, that it isn’t taught, is a lie.
I suspect most of the American Indian issues are still very whitewashed as well.
On race issues, they swung pretty far towards political correctness, IME. They always mention Harriet Tubman, for instance, but not Edison.
Not generally a matter of revisionism, although sometimes the Rosa Parks incident is presented as if it were spontaneous, but more a matter of emphasis - Jefferson and Sally Hemings but not Martin Luther King and his women.
Regards,
Shodan
Advocating ignorance is a new approach here on the Dope, perhaps you’d feel more comfortable were the scary light of knowledge doesn’t shine.
Huh, the AGS United States high school history text book from 2005 mentions both.
The reason IMO is that, historically speaking, the attempts of denial that anything took place with Jefferson and Hemings (or the relatives of Jefferson) continues to tell us about the unfairness of slavery and racism.
BTW in the high school text neither Hemins or the other women of King are mentioned.
As for Rosa Parks, her efforts and the ones from King would had not been very effective if it wasn’t for the support of the black Pullman Porters.
Point being that I think that one reason why the Parks case has been taught as being virtually spontaneous that then we would had to explain the background and then the captains of industry would appear as racist. Not a good thing to teach minority students eh?
Indeed, **Magiver **is just happily ignoring that all modern nations then would have the right to use force to conquer territory. An Argumentum ad baculum.
Time however is what IMHO makes impractical the return of the territory, and only fringe groups of the Mexican descendants in the now American territory would want to be ruled by Mexico.
Shhh ! I’m waiting for him to tell us about white man’s burden. Don’t jinx my bait, man 
I remember lots of “just plain wrong” assertions and very misleading depictions from early elementary school — “Christopher Columbus discovered America and also proved the world was round” being of the first sort, and cheerful cardboard decorations showing pilgrims and indians eating together for thanksgiving w/o mention of what we did to the native americans in the century that followed being of the second… but to a pretty large extent these were corrected or filled in by the time I graduated from high school
One omission that really rocked me back on my heels (when I learned about it years later) was the labor movement in the US. Kinnecott Copper and other companies that “owned towns”, violent attacks on people for striking, the CIO, all that… by the time I was in high school, labor unions in the US seemed mostly to be just another layer of bosses, bureaucracy, and snips taken out of folks’ paychecks, although if they were too weak the corporations would cut salaries and benefits. “Labor” in the sense of movement or union was never presented as having had any meaningful history, and when discussed at all was discussed as if the status quo was how things had pretty much always been (40ish hour work weeks, strikes conducted nonviolently and kind of pro forma as part of contract negotiations, workers’ comp (and associated scams of course), union officials —fat and with cigars, of course — being career political negotiator types at least as interesting in making sure employees have to keep subsidizing unions as they are in advancing employee welfare).
Call me naive and clueless, but I honestly did not realize what working conditions had once been like, or that (WHATEVER you may think of labor unions now) organized labor had had to fight as in “risk get killed and get beat up and jailed often” and that a lot of what we take for granted can be attributed to what they did. And also that the CIO was once kinda different from the modern AFL-CIO thing that exists nowadays.
Part of the issue also is not necessarily “hiding” a topic but the amount of time that is devoted to it. We spent years (collectively) on things like the revolutionary war, WWII, etc but literally minutes on other things like the labor movement or the trail of tears. If something is talked about for one part of one class period on one day of your high school years, most people aren’t going to remember it. The Mexican/American war might’ve been mentioned in my high school for all I know (though I think I remember more than most and I don’t remember it), but we certainly didn’t study it. If anything it was more like “remember these dates for the upcoming test.”
One thing that always grated on me was the depiction of the Texas War of Independence as a fight for freedom, when one of the key issues was the resistance of the Texans against attempts by the government of Mexico to enforce the abolition of slavery in 1829 and prevent importation of more slaves into the territory. Certainly the Texans were fighting for their own freedom; but one of the freedoms they were fighting for was the right to own slaves, something that is almost always glossed over.
The typical oversight on the history of the labor movement was avoided in Howard Zinn’s *A People’s History of the United States
*
That recommended book is considered a supplement to the mainstream history books, not a replacement. (Even Zinn makes this point in his book)
Yes, it’s a good book, but I’ve had to point this out to some overzealous fans of it. I bought it when I was a teenager on the recommendation of one Will Hunting 
p.
I may have had a different experience attending school in California in the 1970’s, but I remember a tremendous emphasis on civil rights movements and treatment of minority populations. The entire movement for African American Civil Rights, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. was covered in some detail (although not to the extent of including their sexual activities). We definitely studied labor movements – Samuel Gompers, the Molly Maguires, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Truman and the steel industry, etc. The internment of the Japanese in WWII was also covered in detail. Our Driver’s Ed teacher had been interned, and always came and spoke to classes for that unit. I always felt that we didn’t learn enough about the American Indians. We did a lot of study of their lives and culture before the arrival of Europeans (focusing on the Pomos, who had inhabited the area where we lived), but not a lot about the way they were treated subsequently. I remember when I went to school in Boston for one year in 7th grade, being surprised by what I considered to be the more traditional curriculum – learning about the Constitution, the presidents, the official actions of the government more than the history of the diverse populations in the country.
Which is not to say that everything we learned was accurate. My biggest surprise in the years since school was learning just how much of a violent, repressive jerk Christopher Columbus was. And of course many nuances of the Civil Rights movement, our role in Viet Nam, our treatment of the Indians, etc. were glossed over. But I never felt that I had been blatantly lied to, or that the history I had learned had been whitewashed.
Something I only learned recently that I thought was very interesting is the purpose of the ENIAC–the first computer.
I learned about the ENIAC in several different grades when learning about computers. They always mentioned it and showed pictures of how it took up large rooms. The pictures always showed people changing the vaccum tubes and such.
But they never really discussed the purpose of the thing. I always assumed a bunch of scientist made it to calculate science stuff or business stuff or something like that. Turns out the ENIAC was a Department of the Army project, built to calculate firing tables to make artillery more accurate and more efficient. The “scientists” in the pictures were Department of Defense employees and US Army soldiers.
Was this information purposely left out? Or did all the textbook authors really think that information was irrelevant. It blew my mind to learn the truth.
I dunno, not repeating the past is probably worth the pain of remembering it.
This page: AP United States History – AP Students | College Board contains a link to a rather large PDF course description for AP US History. If you look at the “course outline” inside that, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what an AP US History class attempts to cover. Regular history classes obviously cover less, but AP US is probably the most widely agreed on curriculum you are going to find.
Which is true but my earlier point referenced the notion that the US stole land from Mexico. This belies the fact that Spanish Mexico was a bloodbath of conquest against the original people of Mexico as was the fighting/displacement of indiginous tribes of the US. All of this is on top of the wars waged between North American tribes.
History is never pretty.
Well, that’s kind of irrelevant, but if you’re even going to go there, you’ve got to compare the extent to which the native Mexican people and cultures survived compared to the extent to which the American Indians did. It’s not even close. The Spanish conquest started out incredibly bloody but there were genuine efforts at integration, rather than seperation and genocide, later on. A person of Spanish and native Mexican descent is called a mestizo. There are 10s of millions of them. What’s a person of mixed English and American Indian descent called?
I’m surprised that there’s only one mention of James Loewen in this thread. You may not agree wuith him, but he does have a point about history being a partuicularly touchy topic, and with interpretations being exttemely controversial. (His second book, on the topic, {b}Lies Across America**, is also well worth the read – it’s about how historical markers are just as suspect, and subject to group pressure)
There’s little doubt in my mind that Us history textbooks do shade the truth, even without getting to controversies of the Loewen level. Juast go up to Canada and read historical markers about the War of 1812, for instance. In their defense, I do think the textbooks are getting better. I’ve been substitute teaching recently, and I;m impressed with how the textbooks are taking on controversial issues. But there are plenty of pressure groups, simplifications, and prejudices around still. Anyone watin the Real Story is going to have to do reading on their own.