Oklahoma tries to ban APUSH (& possibly others AP classes)

[Mechaman]

Fools!

Anyway, I can't say I am at all a fan of this.  This idea that kids should be taught American history without it's bad qualities is just well wrong.  Teaching an exceptionalist view of History is not History.  It's Propaganda.

I know it's cliche, but if you don't learn your History you're doomed to repeat it.  If you are a remotely intelligent and rational individual your understanding of History informs your politics.  Getting rid of classes because they teach actual history instead of the feel good mail stamp version of it causes real damage to the psyche of this current generation.

This is not good at all.  In fact I am going to write a letter to the Oklahoma Legislature telling them exactly what I think in no small words about  their recent vote.  I hope that some wise guy in a federal court has the balls to strike this sh*t down.

Seriously, this is just wrong.

[Mechaman]

To expand upon further:

Truth is that if history was objectively taught (which might not be possible) very few people would come out looking like winners.  Southern slavers would look like human rights violators, but so would northern industrialists whose working conditions were far from our modern standards.  The white supremacy espoused by 19th century Democrats would be impalpitable to many, but so would the cultural elitism and anti-ethnic bigotries of northern Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans.  The anti-Irish racism of many New England Yankees would be seen as hypocrisy, and so would the anti-black racism of many Irishmen.  And on and on and on and on.

The only people who would truly come out of this looking remotely good are nonwhites and women, and that is before we start talking about Aztec human sacrifices, Commanches attacking unarmed settlements, the involvement of black strikebreakers in helping quell white labor union strikes, and womens rights advocates being key in pushing for Prohibition.

Far from teaching exceptionalism for any group, courses like APUSH teach that people in the past were very flawed individuals and what we can learn from their mistakes.  Again, there are no real winners in "History".  If there were we wouldn't need to be learning from their mistakes and failures.

Of course I realize these are very controversial points and probably a few of these work right into the hands of the same people who do want to ban AP US History courses.  The main point isn't some cynical "there are no good guys" kind of post, but merely that courses like APUSH allows for kids to use critical thinking skills to UNDERSTAND the lessons of the past and apply those lessons to prevent (again) repeating the same mistakes of the past.  Of course I believe a lot of these flaws are the fault of traditions and systems (namely Capitalism) that allow such flaws to exist in the first place.

Which is why I fully support any course that doesn't welcome the kind of exceptionalism that some people want to keep in place.