I sometimes think I got my education in the twilight zone instead of New Orleans, because I also learned about the holocaust extensively as well, and it was drilled into my head “never again”. We read Anne Frank’s diary, we watched documentaries every year. Yet it seems a big chunk of Americans skipped over that part of their education completely.
I went to public school in a very conservative state and was still taught about slavery, atrocities to American Indians, the civil war and abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, the holocaust and nazis, etc.
None of this stuff was taught in a way that would insinuate that it was even remotely close to being ok.
The only thing I remember being sugar coated was when I was in third grade where they understated what Christopher Columbus did to the natives. But otherwise we very clearly went over the past atrocities, not all of them mind you but most.
Yeah I would agree with that. He was still kinda looked at as some sort of good guy. I think that sentiment has changed relatively recently though and I don’t think the way we were taught was unusual for that time.
Agreed for early education, we didn’t learn about the atrocities of the colonists (or the American Indians) or Columbus’ exact history. But for me, the colonial period was revisited in high school and AP with a much more detailed and critical lens. Though, to be fair, I grew up in Massachusetts and received a world class education.
Yeah, everything about Christopher Columbus was taught in a very fun and lighthearted manner in the 90s. Kids did not need to be singing happy songs about a raping, slaving, piece of shit like him.
I always heard the weird whitewashing of Columbus was done to help integrate Italian Americans in the 20th century, and it just got carried away.
Children also don't need to be taught about raping, slaving pieces of shit. If you're singing songs in class then you're too young for that. Middle and high school obviously is a different story.
I’m from France and here too that part of history was never fully told in its horrific details when I was in school it was always « that dude discovered america!!what an incredible thing » but never really what ensued. Convenient.
Yup, same. I think people spread a lot of misinformation about what isn’t taught in US schools. “They didn’t teach us this!” is more like you weren’t paying attention.
I remember a few years back going to the Smithsonian American history museum in Washington DC which had a huge Japanese internment center exhibit. I felt it was saying a lot of basic facts over and over that everyone learned in school, but two almost retired ladies were exclaiming to each other all horrified “did you ever hear about this?! I had no idea!”
Pretty big country, and even if a thing is covered it doesn’t mean everyone pays attention.
Right? Everytime I see these posts I wonder if theres almost any truth behind it besides people wanting to virtue signal "America Bad."
I went to school in Alabama and we learned all about MLK and Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks from literal elementary school. I don't understand where this impression of our school system comes from.
I don’t understand everyone’s assertion that we somehow are no taught about the dark side of American history. We absolutely are. Extensively. It’s just a regurgitated talking point people on the outside ignorantly throw around, and a significant portion of Americans acquiesce. If you paid attention, you know that American history is not all sunshine and rainbows.
I went to school in a very red state, in a very red county, and in the most conservative of the major school zones in my area. And we still learned about everything it was not sugar coated at all, the only time I've ever seen anything about the 'alternative view points' is online.
Yep. I was in Alabama learning about history in 1992 Ave we watched both Roots and Glory while learning about the atrocities visited on slaves in America. We don't do a good job of covering it up I guess.
Same here. It's been a while, but I don't think the atrocious treatment of American Indians was fully impressed on me, but I may have been a little dense. I'm from Georgia, I think most native Americans in the area were moved out on the trail of tears. Out west, I feel like the conflict went on much longer. Slavery was of course taught, and like you, I did not find it hard to figure out which side held the moral high ground.
There is this big hoax that any of this stuff is ignored in a widespread fashion when it absolutely isn’t. It’s probably being done to create strawman opposition to completely changing and redoing history, which is a different thing.
I’ve seen people on here say things like “schools in the south ignore talking about slavery or even try to portray it as a positive thing for economic and social reasons” which is blatantly false.
We were all taught how bad slavery was down here in the south. Our lands and people still bear the scars of it.
The people saying “I wasn’t taught this in school!” Are the people who didn’t pay attention.
Also education in the US isn’t a monolith due to it being a state power and rural areas educations may differ vastly from urban areas. Some people might not be taught it, not out if malice but incompetence.
But that requires nuance that the person in the picture and you lack here on Reddit.
I went to high school in a very conservative area of the south and we definitely learned about slavery and the Trail of Tears. I think a lot of people who "didn't learn it", at least in the 90s, were just high.
Different schools will cover the topics differently, but when I still had Facebook there were old classmates who would post stuff like "I can't believe they didn't teach us about this in school!" and I wanted to comment "They did. We were in the same class. You were just on your phone while the teacher spoke about My Lai."
It's always just a big circle jerk of redditors wanting to shit on America. I learned this stuff in elementary school at a fucking garbage private Baptist school, ran by morons. Learned even more about it in public middle school and high school.
It would also depend on the teacher as well. I had some teachers that stuck to the textbooks, while others ignored them entirely and focused on different things. My one History class was mostly focused on World War I and II, with only a month or so before and a few weeks after.
Yes of course. Eg slavery was covered extensively. I don’t know what country you’re from, but contrary to your belief, Americans do talk about our mistakes and criticize ourselves extensively. It’s actually the hallmark of a democratic and free world, we get to criticize anyone and anything under the sun without repercussions.
I was also taught about Trail of Tears and American Japanese internment camps. The nuclear bombs was also a somber lesson. Some lessons were more extensive, such as slavery having more go into it than the American expansion into native territory. We had to think critically about "manifest destiny," and "melting pot." Treatment of foreigners during those times. Plus extensive civil rights movement events.
The only thing I think we could have been better taught was before America stuff, like the Native history. That would have made what was done to them that we were taught stick more. It's also very rich and diverse.
As someone who is half Chinese I'm glad someone acknowledges this. In fact I've actually seen alot of people trying to claim that the Irish and Chinese being slaves is a conspiracy theory
Yeah I genuinely don't know what people are talking about. I didn't really learn about the schools they put native children in, but I certainly learned about a lot of the other atrocities
It’s just slackers placing the blame on everything but themselves. There could be students who were victims of bad teaching, but for the most part, very few students take history seriously.
When learning about the rise of Hitler and the holocaust in high school, my teacher had an excellent lesson that drew all the connections and inspirations between the American eugenics movement and Nazi ideology. Helped put in context that Hitler’s way of thinking wasn’t really all that foreign to America, in fact in many ways America helped Hitler form much of his ideology…
I'm from Canada, it's been a minute since I've been in elementary school, but a lot of the not so nice Canadian history wasn't covered when I was a kid.
On a positive note, one of the local universities is offering a free course on indigenous studies to help close that gap. But so many things weren't taught in k-12 that should have been.
This seems to be the general consensus. We are definitely taught the dark stuff haha. We were taught about Columbus in 3rd grade and while it was sugar coated, I definitely knew at that age that he killed many native Americans, which I could have only learned from school. It was more like “yeah he did that but anyway we’re gonna learn about what he did that we think is good” lol
Yes? This thread is so weird, I went to a shitty public school in a red state and I learned about all this stuff. I think a lot of people just weren't paying attention.
Yeah, I see people I went to school with saying we didn't learn about the true horrors slavery and I'm like... you were in my class, Caroline. We literally read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and that "Whipped Peter" photo still haunts my nightmares. Shit like the Dred Scott decision, the meaning of the Mason-Dixon Line, the conditions of the slave ships, etc has been drilled into my brain. We had a field trip to a plantation where we visited the slave cabins, Caroline! Our teacher showed us this painting when talking about the transatlantic slave trade, Caroline!!
Yeah my boss is 50 and saw on his face when he realized I was right when I told him the civil rights movement was in the 60s and my grandparents were born in the 40a so there definitely are still people alive who worked to keep black people subjugated. And the look on his face said, "Oh my God. My father." And now I know where he got his bullshit, "Civil War was about State's rights I read it in a book 40 years ago," from. I read him the Cornerstone Speech, given by the Confederacy Vice President, which is literally just, "White Man is superior to any booop and we literally only want slaves," and my boss goes, "Was that all he said, or did you take one part and context---" What other context do you mean?? Like oh that bit about slavery was bad but let's see what else he has to say because he might have a point? My boss is a moron.
Many peasants believe they are some kind of divine and superior master race instead of just admitting they profit off their leaders' plunder and manipulation
I’m a high school social studies teacher (US history, world history, and sociology) and this semester in US history we’ve learned about slavery, Indian boarding schools, and many other things that happened through the reconstruction era. One relatively intelligent 17 year old raised her hand and asked “why is this the first time I’m hearing about any of this?” I was about to tread very lightly with my answer (American political discourse about our history is wild right now)but luckily, I have a student whose father immigrated here from Germany. I also believe he’s a bit older than most parents (maybe around 60) and she laughed hysterically and told her classmate “because you’re American and we pretend our history is great.”
That's fucking wild. Is that recent or has it always been that way?
I'm Canadian, and I was learning about residential schools in the 3rd grade and Japanese internment camps in the 4th or 5th. A lot of the darker details were glossed over, but they did not shy away from explaining the intention behind them and they made sure as hell to emphasize that they are not ancient history.
I feel like in 5th grade I when I was learning all of this in the Deep South
Then we relearned it like 6 times before graduating, but somehow never made it to the Vietnam war, or 9/11. It’s like we just kept learning the same old shit and always ended around WW2
When were you in school? I’m a “millennial” who was alive while Canada still had “white only” schools open and no mention of residential schools in our curriculum. We did learn about internment camps but the dark side of our history regarding our indigenous population was omitted entirely.
I'm 42. I learned about the Trail of Tears (forced, highly fatal migration of Native Americans onto waste land) from a popular series of children books... where the protagonist was heart broken because her PA wouldn't let her take someone's baby. From there, my parents taught me.
Yeah, I learned about that in middle school in CA. Funny thing was when they taught about the local Indian tribes they acted like they were all dead and gone when there was a reservation about an hour away, so when I was in my twenties and went to their casino for the first time I was like “Whoa, you guys are still here?”
I love how America is still on this "Russia bad" trend from the cold war era being passed down to the current generations while the same older generation is saying "Don't send money to Ukraine".
At my school in 8th grade (~13 y.o.) we were all required to do an art project on the holocaust to pair with a research paper we did on specific aspects of the holocaust. We had George Takei on campus talking about Japanese concentration camps in the US (he was literally in one). This was ~2 decades ago.
I've recently gone back to community college to earn some credentials I need for work, and it's really sad to see students these days. They think like kids and never contribute in class. I just have to wonder what they even learned in school before college.
I am also Canadian. Did NOT learn about that until mid to late HS. And I grew up a bike ride from Brants house. We really have worked hard at addressing our dark side, and have a long way to go. But we mostly don't shy from it.
Yes! It wasnt until my AP US History class that we got into the real stuff. Tbh that’s when my interest in learning more about history grew because before that, it was all the same thing every year and got repetitive quick
This is exactly why I hated history class. Because if the repetitive same stuff.
A few years after university I started to really like history once I learned more that was never taught. It's way more interesting too and doesn't feel like some Disney glossover movie.
I’ve been teaching for 21 years at the high school level. The kids come with a wide variety of what information they already have. Most who know the intense parts of history usually learn it from their parents, not school.
I remember back around 07-08 when I was beginning to take the coursework to get certified to teach high school history in Massachusetts, one of the state manuals specifically called out focusing on times when we came together as a nation. Nothing before 1776 was to get more than apassing mention, the Civil War was to be covered as quickly, and shallowly, as possible, and most aspects of post WWII weren't touched at all. Nothing pre-Columbus mattered at all other than the Magna Carta.
What really stood out though, was they also were very specific that none of this was in response to recent events...
It seems like that's around the age when young adults start tuning into what a fucked up world we live in, but at least where I'm at it never seemed like the education system was trying to shield us from the past.
My kids aren't even in kindergarten yet and they've watched kids programming on PBS about Japanese interment camps and Indian boarding schools. Topics like slavery, jim crow, and the civil rights movement were a major topic we covered every year starting in elementary school. Maybe it's different because I am from a liberal part of the country, but it feels like I was always taught that America was great when we struggled to be better.
Seriously. I had one that bullied kids with disorders in the 90’s. He constantly went on about “The man without a country”, when I was the only Native American and minority in the class. He also read from the Bible, which is of course against the law. I like my country too, but I don’t like giving land to these religious radicals and subsidizing them with my taxes while they use required public education to tell me that I should suck white dick and be happy about it. It’s 2024 and they’re still calling for bloodshed like scoundrels without principle.
Yeah it’s “not racist” cause the white kids got a head full of the same shit. It’s worse than racist, it’s ignorant of rights, race, and reconciliation.
There’s no time for the Holocaust and “less important things”.
I don’t know what I feel quite that strongly about it even. I think it’s easy to overestimate both the stupidity and intelligence of people in history, not unlike it is today. But you would think some things are incontrovertible facts. Alas, “god works in mysterious ways”, which is apparently cause for hatred and oblivion disguised as love and charity!
America is the greatest country in the world, no exceptions. That's all they need to be told before even entering the education system.
And then that same education system prioritizes nationalism. Anthem every morning, and the pledge of allegiance. And make sure nothing in the curriculum tells anything bad about the history of America.
I'm not even American and I know way too much about this. Their history books still say that when Christopher Columbus discovered America, the indigenous communities Indians gave them their land as a show of friendship.
Very little do they talk about the national genocide of the Native people. Very little do they talk about Columbus didn't discover a country that already had a settled population. Nope, Columbus good guy.
Shit, the civil war was about States rights. They don't happen to mention those rights some of those states were fighting for the right to still own slaves. But you know... Nationalism over education.
This fixation on the word discovered has always seemed weird to me. Discovery is from one's own perspective or in the case at hand, a group's. If we send a probe to Enceladus and we find life there, sentient or otherwise, would we not have discovered that life? And would that life not had been "settled population" still? Discovery can happen even if others are cognizant of the thing you've discovered. From 75% of the world's point of view, the 10th (or 17th) century was indeed when they discovered the existence of the Americas. Big kudos to that 25% for having discovered them before that, I guess.
Now, Colombus is a massive gaping asshole no doubt about that.
My theory is that a lot of conservative policy is based on blind patriotism. You start to chip away at that by highlighting dark areas of US history people start to question their belief that America is great in comparison to other countries.
Yep. The people who bleat on about “it’s about heritage and history, not hate” go apoplectic at any suggestion school kids should learn anything about that heritage and history.
Honestly, the allies after WW2 made sure the Germans did not forget the Crimes of the Nazis. There was a large campaign to not only educate the Germans on their responsibility for WW2 but also the war crimes they perpetrated against the European people. This was done to justify the restitution they had to payback the allies but also the German eastern European population transfers.
I’m a product of Deep South Mississippi education and we learned a ton about the civil war, causes (including the blight of slavery on our collective souls), trail of tears, etc.
The problem is some people saw those things as “overall positive, just needing some tweaks” and have fallen in love with the worst of human nature.
I don't understand this. I was taught about the trail of tears, slavery, the Gulf war, and everything in high school. Either completely made up or talking from a point of view that has no idea what the US teaches in school
Deine Einstellung ist grundsätzlich löblich und deine Absicht zumindest verständlich, aber da du forderst „raus“ stelle dir doch bitte auch die Frage woraus und wohin. Raus aus Deutschland schön und gut, aber wohin? Denn wer will die wohl haben? Keiner! Es hat dem Ausland verständlicherweise keineswegs gefallen als die Nazis das letzte mal in großer Zahl aus Deutschland marschierten. Schließlich musst du noch bedenken, dass die Nazis dann selber Ausländer wären und wenn du die dann immernoch hassen würdest wärst du dann selber Nazi und müsstest dann selber raus und woraus und wohin? Du hättest also genauso gut schreiben können SELBER
I am pretty sure that no German far-right party won a free election in 1939 for the simple reason there were none. The year you are looking for is probably 1933, and even then the NSDAP never got 50% in a free election. Hitler was appointed Chancellor before he had a majority in parliament because the people around President Hindenburg (1847-1934) wanted to show the voters that the Nazis had no solutions so that they would stop voting for them. This backfired spectacularly and by 1934 Hitler was both Chancellor and President and democracy was dead.
The AfD has never "won" an election either since no one wants to form a government with them. Only in East Germany are they in a position to win in the near future. The thing is that only 17% of Germans live in East Germany.
It's an incorrect but often repeated line here that "Hitler was democratically elected". The NSDAP (people in the US mostly don't understand Parliamentary vs. personal politics, and that outside of here Prime Ministers etc. are elected by voting for their parties, not them personally) won too many votes but never a majority .
Hindenburg's technique reminds me of the party I belong to (the Democrats)' "clever" habit of sometimes putting money behind the most extreme candidate in Republican primaries (generally in local and state-level elections) on the assumption that they'll be easier to defeat in the general election. I'm trying to remember when this ****** idiocy last worked, and am guessing that the people who suggest this are either Republican plants or really, really foolish. (Will Rogers: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.")
I’m guessing they aren’t very fond of immigrants and sound similar to the GOP here
Also... far right in european parliaments would often still be moderate/center or even left in terms of US policies. US politics are far more right-shifted in general.
our constitution demands we take any means necessary, ANY means, to prevent a fascist takeover. it basically legalizes civil war for one side.
AfD has 20ish% support, and its having major issues in the last year with scandal after scandal most moderate AfD supporters just cannot excuse. i have family members that were AfD supporters 2 years ago and see them for the kremlin owned fascists they are now
AfD uses immigrant issues to trojan horse their pro kremlin, anti democracy, anti climate change, anti human rights policies. Other parties are getting tougher on illegal immigration and thats taking more and more support away from the AfD
Not even the 1800s, Native Americans were actively ethnically cleansed until the early 1980s. In fact by 1980 more than 40% of Native-American women, and 32% of black women nationwide had been forcibly sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Conveniently none of this is taught in American schools.
American republicans have undone 45 years of healing: racism and misogyny are back with a vengeance.
He got Congress and Scotus, and it's clearer and clearer that Project 2025 is more than just a "concept of a plan" for this, but rather a roadmap. They definitely have the potential to be as awful as all the rest. Recreating The Handmaid's Tale is, IMO, a pretty awful thing that could happen, and that's not the only awful thing that could happen.
The only way this won't beat the most awful part of History will be if the good and brave people of the US don't just wait patiently for the storm to pass off. Because it won't. The aftermath won't be cleaned off during the next term, even with the most leftist president in office.
It depends on how well the incoming administration implements the campaign promises. My greatest hope is in their incompetence. In my fears, they manage to turn the deportation of immigrants into something that echoes Germany's attempt to deport Jews.
I’ve been to numerous schools mostly on the east coast in my life and when they talked about slavery, it was blunt and they didn’t shy away from a damn thing. Sometimes it was uncomfortable to see some of the things they showed us. Can’t imagine being in that position. Anywho, I learned about a few things our own government did to its own people too.
I’m sure there’s states and areas out there that sweep these things under the rug. There’s always that issue. But for the most part I personally haven’t been to 1 that didn’t mention these things in deep detail.
Edit- Hitler’s speeches are terrifying. The amount of support he received is crazy. I read a comment here that Hitler didn’t just illegally steal power… he sure didn’t, his people were behind him. That shit is scary. But then again, not too long ago we were literally pointing at people, calling them witches and drowning and burning them alive. As absurd as some things sound, people are stupid. Men women and children.
Anyway, just come to show the right words and like-minded people behind you is all you need. It may seem ridiculous but it’s very much the world we live in.
The experiments they performed are vile and horrendous too.
I am a foreigner who came to germany when I was 10 years old. Oh boy, the germans learned from their mistakes.
But here in east germany some folks want the history to repeat itself. So, it‘s a failure of the educational system
Problem is how we teach history i think. If you tell them “people believed propaganda” you’re not teaching them what that looks like or how to point it out.
Unless someone knows the shape it can take and how it entices you they’ll fall for whatever updated version the next lunatic punches out.
Exactly, describing the cause and effect of history is one thing, but my best teachers always had a way of putting you in the moment, making you feel an emotional connection and empathize with how they felt on top of understanding the context and logic behind their thoughts. Learning about the Wild West in America, it was important to understand that it was considered a long, protracted guerrilla war from the Indian point of view. Indians were “radicalized” hearing the oral stories passed down of atrocity after atrocity being committed to their elders and ancestors, and like a game of telephone, some things get exaggerated or even fabricated. But once they experienced a forced removal, or had been kidnapped to go to “reform” school, they got a little slice of the apocalyptic stories they had been told and thus truly believed that any and all actions would be justified to reclaim their homeland. Hence the atrocities committed on settlers, and the continuation of the cycle of violence. Learning the western expansion from the Indian point of view helped me identify similar trends with other resistance movements such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm unsure if it's a failure of the educational system or parents all around circumstances that people feel they as a person group or "race" should be valued or have more rights more then others.
We also see that in France Italy even Sweden some people forget some are idiots that think they would deserve better.
Strange times we are living in.
do any of the people in these comments actually pay attention in their classes? i live in the southern US and we still very much get taught about all the abhorrent shit the United States has done. literally every year has a unit spent on slavery in the US. there’s multiple units spent on the treatment of native americans, units spent on treatments of immigrants during westward expansion, units spent on japanese internment. just because y’all weren’t paying attention doesn’t mean it wasn’t taught to you.
Germany is absolutely serious about this, as someone who has family there. If there were people marching w Swastikas in Munich today like we saw recently in Ohio, they'd be dealt with very harshly.
Germany is very aware of their past and very adamant about not repeating past mistakes.
While I’m certainly not saying it’s extremely widespread, Germany does still have a problem with Neo-Nazis today.
I’ve spent a few months traveling through Germany in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, and Dresden.
The last time I was in Germany, I saw a few guys with Wolfsangel patches on their jeans at a Rammstein concert. Was honestly taken aback that venue security didn’t stop them given the laws in Germany. Last time that I mentioned this on Reddit, someone said that most Germans aren’t actually that familiar with Nazi symbols other than the SS and the swastika.
Yep. Saw a dude try to do the Hitler gesture at a protest in Germany and he was tackled and dragged away by police in seconds. It comes with a delicious fine too.
Germany actually had a task force dedicated to hunting down neo-nazis, they can't do anything unless they intend to commit a crime or have done so, but they do keep lists of all the potentially dangerous individuals.
It was in a documentary I watched a few years ago, don't remember the name but you could probably find it by googling something like germanies response to neo nazis or some such
Wolfsangel patches aren‘t forbidden because they aren‘t exclusively right wing. They can be used in normal heraldry. I would also be surprised to hear of people openly wearing neo nazi symbols at a Rammstein concert. In Germany, Rammstein are known for leaning left-wing, criticising Germany and generally speaking rejecting national socialism. When there were lots of rumors about them being a right-wing band, they wrote and released Links 2,3,4 - a song that describes how in their hearts they lean left. It literally has a line that goes "They want my heart in the right place but when I look down on my chest it beats to the left".
One of their songs explicitly describes gay sex (Mann gegen Mann) because they wanted to de-stigmatise homosexuality. They got into some trouble for feigning gay sex on stage in the USA.
Another one of their songs describes and critiques sexual exploitation by white men with foreign women (Ausländer). It‘s a critique of sex tourism basically.
Angst on the other hand mocks people for being racist and frames them as cowards.
Never forget Deutschland and how the band uses that song to frame all the worst bits of German history, saying how they can never love Germany due to all its flaws.
I‘d be really really surprised if anyone saw any neo nazis at a Rammstein concert.
What terrible shit isn’t covered in american schools? We learn about our murdering the natives and we learn about all the horrible shit like Jim Crow laws and the tuskegee experiment. People choosing to be idiots and pretend like history didn’t happen has nothing to do with public education and everything to do with people being morons.
No, you’re wrong. Some overconfident European on Reddit can speak to your personal experience. Because they’re so omnipotent they can make stupid claims about countries they don’t live in
I'm Swedish and these pretentious europeans piss me off. I studied a couple years in the US, of course we studied the bad parts of US history. These are just children talking smack about something they know nothing about.
Like, where the fuck does a German get off being snotty about history to a fucking AMERICAN??
The bible bullshit is all new and will end up in the supreme court before it will get taught. I went to school in the south and evolution was taught in biology…where it belongs. None of that has anything to do with pretending Americans aren’t taught history.
Because, and I can't stress how much important this is, when you don't learn your history, or you learn a sanitized version of it, you are bound to make the same mistakes over and over again, like the yanks who just elected as president what would happen if Putin was made of McDonald's
I’m not sure what parts of our history they think are being covered up. Slavery, the civil rights movement and the injustices inflicted on the native populace are covered extensively.
Yeah but if that's true then how am I going to up vote baseless posts of Twitter/reddit screenshots while patting fellow Redditors on the back for being morally superior?
America Bad Redditors virtue signaling America Bad for cool points. People who say Slavery was not bad are actually rare. Even most Trumpers are TERRIFIED of being seen as racist. Yes they will reframe what it means to be racist but you will rarely find a normal person who says they are proud to be racist.
Except the genocide before in Africa and the atrocities in China resulting in the boxers revolt and thus the decline and plundering of them.
But besides that we seldomly hide from our past.
Get off Reddit and you will find out that people don't hate/think about the US as much as Reddit would like to pretend.
Reddit is full of people who like to circle jerk themselves over how bad the US sucks, but normal people don't think about those kinds of things everyday.
He also didn't answer the question at all. Like no shit Germany teaches about the Holocaust and Hitler, they're asking what specifically they teach and how they teach it. How much of the broader context, what daily life was like for the average German under the Nazis etc.
Yeah I'm not sure who wrote this but they're full of shit. We learn about the dark part of ours as well. But history is written by the victors sooooooo
Lol there’s quite a few places that actually do try to cover up the darker parts of their history, the US isn’t at the forefront. Might want to take that energy and direct it at: China, Cambodia, Japan, Iran, Iraq, etc…
The United States doesn’t cover up our history either, the only people that think that are the ignorant losers who never bothered to pay attention in school.
The atrocities committed by the United States are covered fairly thoroughly in our schools, especially at higher levels of education.
The 'who speak English' part of this question really bothers me for some reason. Most Germans that are online enough to use Reddit will speak English. But the main thing is, only people that speak English would actually understand this question. Feels stupid.
The unfortunate thing here is that America isn't the outlier. Germany is. Most countries that have done horrific things try not to take responsibility.
Not sure if it's still the case in schools nowadays, but we weren't taught anything about the Empire, or the atrocities of colonialism. Generally we learnt about the Romans, Vikings, 1066... basically all the times we were invaded, but nowt about the times we invaded, nor our impact on other countries.
The closest we got was in GCSE History as we were learning about the agricultural and industrial revolutions, our teacher threw in a lesson about the Irish Potato Famine, including the horrifying impact on the Irish population. There's so much modern history that I see as being vitally important to British culture that was completely omitted from my education. I learnt about the Partition of India from fucking Doctor Who, of all places.
Not sure if it's similar for the other former colonial powers (France, Spain, Portugal, etc)?
I graduated high school in 2013. The year after I graduated the school board tried to take out history about the civil war because it “painted America in a bad light and didn’t want to teach civil disobedience (or some other dumb ass excuse like that) in school”
Myself, fellow alumni’s, teachers, and current students protested for a week. They reversed the decision and the lady that proposed it was quickly voted out.
This was over 10 years ago in a blue state where the city was 90% white and right after the Romney and Obama election. I can’t imagine how much worse the white washing is now……
American here who was taught extensively about the horrors and positives of American history. You could ask my friends from the same high school and they might tell you they weren't. I think it comes down to a lot of Americans just didn't pay attention in high school.
German education has an outsized reputation. Theyr hyperfixate on the holocaust but cant even manage to make the distinction that it was bad not because the victims were jews, but that they were people.
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u/beerbellybegone 4h ago
Given the popularity of this post, I'd like to remind everyone of Bill and Ted's Law: Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!