• AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Its fun to reminisce about all the blatant lies we were fed in grade school.

    Who remembers that pretty cartoon in their textbooks of the pilgrims and their new friends the Native Americans enjoying a Thanksgiving feast together?

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      We spent only spent a week learning about the labor movement in US history, and it was basically “Kids were working in factories and then they passed a law to stop that.”

      It’s like they didn’t want to give us ideas.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I feel like everything between the emancipation of the slaves and the 60s Civil Rights Movement was skimmed over.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It’s actually even more fucked up than fabricating it entirely. Early on they were more or less getting along, but under false pretenses. The settlers claimed they had no interest in expanding into native lands and they were just there temporarily to facilitate trade with England.

    • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      I remember when we were taught in school that karl marx was russian and when were told what communism is, we were given the definition for Authoritarianism, not any economic changes

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Huh? Which part or parts are you saying is false? With what little records we have of the time, it’s still relatively true.

      Native Americans weren’t all one nation. Settlers were at peace and at war with numerous different tribes just like many city state type nations.

      Here I thought you were going to say there was no classic Thanksgiving meal, which is sorta true. What they ate was very different but still relatively based in truth to our knowledge.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_dinner#Plymouth_Colony_and_Thanksgiving_dinner

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)#Early_thanksgiving_observances

      • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s extremely disingenuous and intentionally misleading that our introduction of the Native Americans to young children is portrayed as peaceful and kind when the headline of European immigrant relations with Native Americans is genocide. It would be better to say nothing about them than to leave the opposite impression of what actually happened until they’re older.

        It would be akin to young German Children being taught about Adolf Hitler: Staunch Animal Rights activist until they’re older. Sure, I guess he was, but it would be obvious what the goal of leading with that factoid is.

        The goal of early social study books highlighting that is to instill “America Yay” ideas in kids heads, a vestige of the whole manifest destiny we did nothing wrong narrative. We are a nation built on foundations of genocide and slavery. That is overwhelming reality. But many, particularly conservative Americans, would prefer that be expunged from our national identity so they can feel better about our history, which is the basis of their war on CRT.

        • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I don’t think that’s true at all nor what they teach in numerous areas. Ymmv depending on your school district and how racist your rural school or suburbian city is though.

          Regardless, your point of contention was literally with the First Thanksgiving mythos. It’s like saying the Christmas Day Soccer match in WW1 or whatever isn’t true because there was a war between every nation happening. Absolutely not. It’s one point of goodness which should absolutely be taught. Because humans do vastly more good than bad.

          Humanity trudges on with or without the doomers every generation since even before Jesus the Apocalypticist.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      My history teacher told me, 1) the best thing that can happen to a country is to be invaded by the US because the US will rebuild them. He could only mention Japan though. 2) real estate only goes up. 3) complained about poor “wellfare queens”, but no mention of corporate welfare queens, 4) said that, with the exception of Teacher Unions, the Unions were obsolete.

      There were probably more, but those always stuck out to me even back when he told them. This was circa 2003. On the flip side, I only heard one mention of climate change out of a science teacher and only when questioned directly about it.