Hitler and Stalin, Literature Requirements in the Educational System
I've often wondered why it is that so many students hear about the evils Hitler committed and never hear much about Stalin.
Unless one comes across a particularly thorough professor, students often have the atrocities that Stalin committed against his own people are often glossed over. I was discussing this with a friend tonight when it hit me: Stalin was an ally, therefore we can't go 'round talking about how our allies in WWII were killing tens of millions of their own people, even more people than Hitler had.
Hitler was detestable at best, but Stalin killed more people...so doesn't this at the very least make them equally detestable? Can't students learn just as much from studying him as they do hearing about Nazism in Germany?
I suppose I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with the educational system in this country. The majority of the literature we are taught is in English, when we should (at the very least) have to read translated versions of other cultures' literature...and the only thing we seem to be forced to read that isn't an original English or American work are the Greek classics, Beowulf, and possibly The Epic of Gilgamesh. While all of these should be taught, isn't it just as important that we read literature from all sides?
Meanwhile, they have everyone being forced to take what is to me an excessive amount of math and sciences, so we learn nothing of other cultures. It just seems a bit lop-sided to me.
Another thing -- we do take American literature, but I have yet to read anything by O'Connor, Faulkner, McCullers, or any other Southern Gothic writer in any class, when it was such a huge movement. I've never even been required to read a novel by Twain! Is it because, god forbid, these authors wrote in the vernacular, using the "n" word freely? Of course I've read most of these authors on my own, but people who read them freely aren't the ones who really need to be exposed to it. We're going to read it whether it's on Oprah's book list or not.
I don't understand why we're not required to learn a language. Not fluently, anyways. We're required to get enough verbs and nouns in so that if we went to another country we could ask where the bathroom or train station is, and that's it. Granted I'm horrible at languages and I barely got a C in French III, so it may have been a good thing for me...but it seems that Americans are so stuck on being Anglo that we completely ignore other cultures and languages. And yet we wonder why we can't understand other peoples and they can't understand us.
Unless one comes across a particularly thorough professor, students often have the atrocities that Stalin committed against his own people are often glossed over. I was discussing this with a friend tonight when it hit me: Stalin was an ally, therefore we can't go 'round talking about how our allies in WWII were killing tens of millions of their own people, even more people than Hitler had.
Hitler was detestable at best, but Stalin killed more people...so doesn't this at the very least make them equally detestable? Can't students learn just as much from studying him as they do hearing about Nazism in Germany?
I suppose I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with the educational system in this country. The majority of the literature we are taught is in English, when we should (at the very least) have to read translated versions of other cultures' literature...and the only thing we seem to be forced to read that isn't an original English or American work are the Greek classics, Beowulf, and possibly The Epic of Gilgamesh. While all of these should be taught, isn't it just as important that we read literature from all sides?
Meanwhile, they have everyone being forced to take what is to me an excessive amount of math and sciences, so we learn nothing of other cultures. It just seems a bit lop-sided to me.
Another thing -- we do take American literature, but I have yet to read anything by O'Connor, Faulkner, McCullers, or any other Southern Gothic writer in any class, when it was such a huge movement. I've never even been required to read a novel by Twain! Is it because, god forbid, these authors wrote in the vernacular, using the "n" word freely? Of course I've read most of these authors on my own, but people who read them freely aren't the ones who really need to be exposed to it. We're going to read it whether it's on Oprah's book list or not.
I don't understand why we're not required to learn a language. Not fluently, anyways. We're required to get enough verbs and nouns in so that if we went to another country we could ask where the bathroom or train station is, and that's it. Granted I'm horrible at languages and I barely got a C in French III, so it may have been a good thing for me...but it seems that Americans are so stuck on being Anglo that we completely ignore other cultures and languages. And yet we wonder why we can't understand other peoples and they can't understand us.