Hey Everyone,
I think we can all agree that and history taught in elementary school is bullshit. There is no excuse for the nonsense that goes on in our education system (and I'm only talking about the history portion of elementary school, I have a special angry place for the administration in charge of my school district AND I'm from California)
Ok, let's start with Native Americans. I think every history lesson involving Native Americans should begin with, "We pretty much fucked Native Americans over. We slaughtered millions of them and herded them onto tiny reservations where we proceeded to make sure that they had no money except casino income, which is pretty unrealistic when your reservation is in the middle of goddamn nowhere anyone wants to live" (I have a special angry place for all the shitty things done by our government too, fuck nationalism, I know that my country was built on all kinds of lies and slaughter, and good things too, but the lies and slaughter stand forefront in my mind)
Sorry, tangent. So our best example of an elementary school historical gloss-over is Christopher Columbus. The man was (insert every curse word you can imagine here). He is responsible of the extinction of an ENTIRE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE (about five million people). He didn't even discover North America, and here we have goddamn Columbus Day. Why yes, let's celebrate the jerk, he's done so much for culture and society. He was only a gold-digger anyways.
Of course, back then (almost) everyone was allowed to be a stupid uninformed racist because it was culturally acceptable to screw the weaker ethnicity (thankfully there were the muckrakers!)
I could go on to mention the railroads, the Gilded Age (yay social darwinism!), and a plethora of other historical examples, but since we all have google at our fingertips, you're welcome to explore other atrocities in American history.
My point is this, why are we telling little kids that the way we treated Native Americans was all hunky dory? The most we ever talked about in relation to the Trail of Tears was that it was "bad". There was no mention of the fact that it was ordered by Andrew Jackson (another asshole in history who almost caused the financial collapse of the US, maybe I should start a web series...) and some idiot in my elementary school decided it would be educational to have a bunch of little white kids sing about it for their parents. I mean SERIOUSLY? Who the hell decides this stuff?
Who decides that we tell children a glossed over version of the truth?
To preserve their innocence? (Because they'll be just as thrilled as I was to get to AP US History and realize their entire understanding of history is a fucking lie)
Real history is too complicated? (NO FUCKING WAY! How about we just wait until they're older and then tell them about it? Or trust that kids are smart enough to handle it? In my opinion there could be a better solution that showing them cartoon pictures of happy pilgrims and Indians)
To make all little kids think that United States is a wonderful happy place where nothing bad ever happens and our government does everything right? (Ugh, conspiracy theories make me crazy, don't go there. Although it seems to be the only legitimate reason I've come up with so far... At least remotely legitimate).
I know that kids are not emotionally prepared for "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" I cried in class when we watched it (my senior year in high school). I'm just saying we shouldn't lie to them about our county's historical background . The banality of happy pilgrims and Indians has to stop. The Christopher Columbus was a good friend to the United States has to stop. The glossing over of the civil rights movement has to stop. And for the love of tomatoes, where is the women's rights movement?!?! (Sorry, my feminist side wanted a say)
We cannot lie to our children about what happened in the US unless we want to encourage a repeat of the same uninformed behavior that led to some of these mistakes. The happy pilgrims and Indians lie led me to believe that Indians and Americans loved each other.
Ok, that pretty much covers it.
Oh and one more thing, fucking American Girl dolls. Don't even go there...
See you all later.
PS The word of the day is banality, which means lack of originality. You may notice I slipped it into my post :P
