These curriculum changes garnered very little media attention. I ended up going with a local news site to link for this article because I did not find coverage on this topic from sources that I am...
State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the OSDE approved new social studies standards in February. Those standards, which you can read here, were updated in March to include some quiet changes from the board's first draft, including claims of "discrepancies" in the 2020 presidential election and the origins of COVID-19.
There was no evidence found that there was widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election.
The revised standards also removed the impact George Floyd's death and the Black Lives Matter movement had on the nation.
These curriculum changes garnered very little media attention. I ended up going with a local news site to link for this article because I did not find coverage on this topic from sources that I am familiar with.
It is known that our educational system in the United States is under attack. I just find it jarring that official curriculum is starting to shift into conspiratorial territory. I fear for the future of our country when the younger generations will be heavily indoctrinated with misinformation. How can we combat it when it is being taught in public school?
It's always been true that the winners write the history books. We tend to think of that as being focused on war, but I suppose it could mean pretty much any part of the past. I have a friend who...
It's always been true that the winners write the history books. We tend to think of that as being focused on war, but I suppose it could mean pretty much any part of the past.
I have a friend who grew up in China, she thought Tibet had always been a part of China.
In US classrooms, there was no acknowledgement smallpox blankets distributed to and among native Americans until fairly recently. That's to say: it's never been just about war. It's often to elide...
In US classrooms, there was no acknowledgement smallpox blankets distributed to and among native Americans until fairly recently. That's to say: it's never been just about war. It's often to elide over those behaviors that show that we're the baddies.
A better version I've heard is "writers write history". It's certainly not as dramatic but it tends to be a lot truer. There are examples where the only/main surviving texts are from the winning...
A better version I've heard is "writers write history". It's certainly not as dramatic but it tends to be a lot truer.
There are examples where the only/main surviving texts are from the winning culture, eg. Carthage vs Rome, but there are also examples where the only/main surviving texts are from the losing culture, eg. 'The Sea Peoples' vs The Bronze Age, Spartans vs Persia, England vs Vikings, Jews vs ...everyone pre~1967.
And notable weird examples like yours where the losers were either sympathetic to the winners or at least believed over other sources for a time and much of the loser's narrative was written into the winners history.
I'm very curious how kids will react to this material in schools. I hear a lot of concern that kids will be indoctrinated by it. But my recollection of high school is that kids are pretty cynical,...
I'm very curious how kids will react to this material in schools. I hear a lot of concern that kids will be indoctrinated by it. But my recollection of high school is that kids are pretty cynical, and especially when they have access to other information than just what schools provide them. They're not passive clay that gets molded by hands from above.
When I'm feeling hopeful, I think this type of assault on an educated public might backfire by exposing the evil nature of the organizers, thereby fueling resentment and resistance.
But when I'm feeling pessimistic, I think about the young people I know these days who can't pull their nose away from video games or tiktok feeds long enough to even wonder if they should be learning about civics, who list their two future goals as either being a video game developer or a social media influencer.
Of course reality is somewhere in between, and we all have the ability to think critically and to learn, and to encourage each other to do the same. It's important that we talk about this on places like Tildes (and hopefully more and more free and open places like it) so that maybe we can steer public discourse toward the benefit of the public rather than the benefit of the corporate advertisers and elite powers.
These curriculum changes garnered very little media attention. I ended up going with a local news site to link for this article because I did not find coverage on this topic from sources that I am familiar with.
It is known that our educational system in the United States is under attack. I just find it jarring that official curriculum is starting to shift into conspiratorial territory. I fear for the future of our country when the younger generations will be heavily indoctrinated with misinformation. How can we combat it when it is being taught in public school?
It's always been true that the winners write the history books. We tend to think of that as being focused on war, but I suppose it could mean pretty much any part of the past.
I have a friend who grew up in China, she thought Tibet had always been a part of China.
In US classrooms, there was no acknowledgement smallpox blankets distributed to and among native Americans until fairly recently. That's to say: it's never been just about war. It's often to elide over those behaviors that show that we're the baddies.
If winners always wrote the history books, there would be no propagation of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth.
A better version I've heard is "writers write history". It's certainly not as dramatic but it tends to be a lot truer.
There are examples where the only/main surviving texts are from the winning culture, eg. Carthage vs Rome, but there are also examples where the only/main surviving texts are from the losing culture, eg. 'The Sea Peoples' vs The Bronze Age, Spartans vs Persia, England vs Vikings, Jews vs ...everyone pre~1967.
And notable weird examples like yours where the losers were either sympathetic to the winners or at least believed over other sources for a time and much of the loser's narrative was written into the winners history.
Archive link for Europeans.
I'm very curious how kids will react to this material in schools. I hear a lot of concern that kids will be indoctrinated by it. But my recollection of high school is that kids are pretty cynical, and especially when they have access to other information than just what schools provide them. They're not passive clay that gets molded by hands from above.
When I'm feeling hopeful, I think this type of assault on an educated public might backfire by exposing the evil nature of the organizers, thereby fueling resentment and resistance.
But when I'm feeling pessimistic, I think about the young people I know these days who can't pull their nose away from video games or tiktok feeds long enough to even wonder if they should be learning about civics, who list their two future goals as either being a video game developer or a social media influencer.
Of course reality is somewhere in between, and we all have the ability to think critically and to learn, and to encourage each other to do the same. It's important that we talk about this on places like Tildes (and hopefully more and more free and open places like it) so that maybe we can steer public discourse toward the benefit of the public rather than the benefit of the corporate advertisers and elite powers.