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.

Source

American

Comments

[polynucleotide]

so much stuff in my honors us 2 class was just skipped over i felt i was barely taught anything.

[lurkurheartout]

the way they teach history in the US is tragic. I love history so much, and because of that I never shut up about it. However, through my years of my historical rantings my friends have told me I taught them more in 5 minutes than they ever learned in history class and that doesn't shock me. US history is nothing but propaganda at this point. Then if you grew up in Southern States you are taught Lost Cause revisionism and it's cause huge problems. Revamp the whole system, please.

[lurkurheartout]

Furthermore, the way we learn about WWII is HORRIBLE. We gloss over Internment Camps. I had a teacher turn Nazi Eugenics and if there was a spot for us in the Third Reich into a GAME. Like yes, I might have been a blonde haired, blue eyed woman, but I was Polish so I was the first to die in class. Then when I pointed out the Nazi probably wouldn't have killed me the invading Russians from the east almost right after the Nazis did I was told I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about.

My favourite part though is that you have the "NAZIS ARE BAD, VERY BAD" mentality on everything WWII. However, no one ever mentions things like Operation Paperclip, which was the US taking Nazi scientist to work for rockets and eventually NASA. Or how people like the "Butcher of Lyon" aka Klaus Barbie got employed by the US govt to work on Anti-Communist measures and he got to live to the nice ripe age of 77.

[benihime99]

Or how the commander of unit 731 escape any form of justice for "reasons"

[la_loony]

I would like to punch the teacher who turned Eugenics into a game. Like what the actual fuck was wrong with them???

[limey37]

I'm Canadian,but lived in South Florida from 10-18. My AP American history teacher was fantastic (looked like a stereotypical racist Republican,but was not at all). I still do well on trivia and Jeopardy related to US history.But, there was definitely rah rah America at certain points.

[babyyoda]

I’m a Texan and the way we learn about the Alamo is ridiculous

[spoil]

I can attest to that and honestly say throughout school I learned absolutely NOTHING about the United States involvement in South America. When you get taught US history in school, they teach you it in a formulaic domestic policy way imo, they never teach you really about foreign policy or international affairs unless it's major wars.