Last Week Tonight - Teaching American History

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In light of the protests around George Floyd and Trump's attempt to hold his Tulsa campaign rally on Juneteenth, Last Week Tonight looks at how the ways teaching American history in schools has purposely sugar-coated if not purposely misled students on its more pernicious aspects, particularly slavery and institutional racism.

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American

Comments

[georgeslymaniv]

I will never forget how in my Asian Studies class we had a round table discussion (there were like 15 students) about whether it was the right decision to drop the bomb on Japan twice. I thought it was a no brainer - of course not. We had discussed the Dresden bombing in English class while reading Slaughthouse Five and the class unanimously said that was wrong because it was a civilian target. I was shocked when the majority said it was right.

It was divided between the 12 white kids who said yes and the 3 Asian kids who said no. None of us Asians were even Japanese. But it was clear why the kids chose the sides they did.

The main reason? "It kept them from killing way more of us." I know in their heads they meant Americans and not white people, but I couldn't help seeing the color divide. They didn't see Asian people as fully human, imo. That's always been the problem with the way history has been taught. They act like white Americans are the protagonists that you're supposed to root for, they make it impossible for kids to empathize with the motives of any POC, there is no point of view from any POC. It's all white people talking about POC. But when its a white story, they encourage you to see the events unfold from that perspective.

[shinychopstick]

We had a lot of complicated discussions about the atomic bombings and its effects in my modern Japanese history/modern Korean history university courses but I'm thankful that it was led by capable historians and tackled the subject of colonialism, and was also empathetic toward those impacted on every side. It's disappointing that U.S. history can't even get past the first step of unpacking all of this.

[la_loony]

Wow that's horible. I'm pretty sure no one in my class was that awful to say the bombings where the right descision. But I'm from Germany, so when we were at the point of learning more in depth about everything that happened after the surrender of the Germans we came out of being shown the full scope of the Holocaust so dropping not one but two bombs that whipe out whole cities couldn't sound right to anyone.
I'm surprised you discussed the Dresden bombings, wouldn't have thought that's talked about much outside of Germany and probably the UK. It's my hometown, so when we learned about it it was so chilling cause you knew all the places that were targeted and could still see the damages on a lot of the old baroque buildings in some form (like they rebuild one church while I was growing up and used as many of the old stones as they could and they sick out so much between the lighter new ones). It's a tricky subject here though, because right wing politicians etc. instrumentalize it a lot.

The main reason? "It kept them from killing way more of us."
I never understood this sentiment back in school (I certainly was not aware enough to see the racial divide you pointed out that was in that sentence as well), because the war was not on US soil but they acted like every regular US citizen was in immediate danger as if it was super easy for foreign troops to just cross the oceans to get to them. But looking at this segment I get how this way of thinking came to be.