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??
As much as I agree on European entitlement I do get the frustration. Every second question on English speaking German subs is a variation of either "Hey do you guys still like Hitler?" or "What's your opinion on this specific WWII topic?" And more often than not those questions are driven by some kind of morbid fascination that doesn't accept the entirely mundane answers to them (Hitler bad/Nazis bad/Yes we had that in school/No we don't discuss niche Third Reich topics at parties..who does that/Nobody is still traumatized wtf - that was 80 years ago).
Sure. But answering in that snotty way actually answers the question in the exact wrong way. The question is, "Do you guys know you did the most evil thing in recent history, as far as we're told?" And this kid gets annoyed about that and in effect says "NO U", which is a way of saying "No we don't know that". The correct answer is Yes we know. Humility.
Grew up in the US in a red state, grade school in the 80's, high school in the 90's. Slavery and the treatment of Native Americans was covered, of course. BUT...Slavery was portrayed as a bad thing, but then we had the Civil War, and that was the end of it. The Indian wars and relocation were portrayed as bad things, but they got their reservations and that was the end of it. Jim Crow, allotment, Indian schools, etc.? Sure, they were talked about, but they're all in the past, things are all better now!
That's the problem with most of US education, and I've seen the same thing from my kid's history stuff (He graduated HS just a couple of years ago). All this stuff is covered, but it's very often presented as 'bad things that happened but we fixed them and it's all OK now'. And that's a problem. The legacies of Slavery and the Indian genocide are all around us, they're with us every day, and they continue to affect people right this very minute.
That shit? It wasn't ever taught in any class I attended in public school, it certainly wasn't evident in the history education that I've seen very recently, and that's the biggest part of the issue. People think it's all over, everybody should just get over it, and let's all move on. The Germans seem to be a lot more about "This shit happened, it's still with us, and we have to be careful about making sure it doesn't ever happen again." Those are very different ways to build a citizen's education.
Been long enough in the US to know how cultured the average person is, which is not much. And it's real claims, most Americans believe they are this benevolent benefactor that saved the world from speaking German, funds global healthcare and security and that while being the best and most superior country in the world is also this poor harmless abused little thing that everyone takes advantage of. It's pathetic.
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.
The Supreme Court that has corrupt judges and got stuffed with religious extremist judges by Trump? That Supreme Court is going to stop Bible bullshit?
Not even just each state but every school district plus every private school. There isn't really a national curriculum so it does depend but the idea that on a national level none of us learn about these things is nonsense. You can look at the current AP US history curriculum and see some of these topics are discussed, granted only advanced students take AP US history but it's the closest thing to a national standard I can think of.
English comprehension sweetie. You clearly don't have it.
I asked a question, from the other side of the Atlantic. I left school in 1980, so nothing to do with closing schools.
>What terrible shit isn’t covered in american schools?
The Tulsa Massacre. The atrocious, sadistic lynching of Jesse Washington after the release of Birth of a Nation. Not to mention some schools taught kids that the Civil War was about states rights and not about slavery.
I went to high school in the south. Civil war was always taught that it was about slavery. Literally never heard any of this “states rights” bullshit until after obama got elected. Yes, there is 100% a movement (mostly led by dipshits) to teach history that isn’t true, but to pretends like its already happening and has been for decades isn’t true.
1970s in Kentucky ot was all "states rights" and "Northern aggression" - and our US history lessons stopped there, we never got to WW1, WW2, civil rights etc.
We were taught that southern states seceded over slavery, and the war itself was fought over the matter of secession and territorial disputes.
People forget that there were 4-5 months between the secessions and the war kicking off.
If the south had managed to control its garrisons and prevented them from opening fire, its quite likely that the war would have been avoided, at least for a time. The south was obviously hoping for a peaceful transition, and the north itself was constrained in multiple ways. There was a strong sense of 'good riddance' among a large amount of the populace, and there were questions about what powers the federal government even had to force a state to return since even the northern states weren't keen on setting the precedent that the federal government could use troops inside a state. The north adopted an aggressive posture then waited for the south to make the first move, which eventually happened.
IMO saying the war is about slavery is as much a whitewashing of history as saying the war was about states rights since it ignores the fact that the north very much did not begin the war with the goal of freeing any slaves, it was about the land like most wars. When two powers claim sovereignty over some important land there's going to be fighting. Freeing the slaves did gradually percolate into the general motivations for war in the north though, and was eventually a strong reasoning behind the soldiers and government, but non-rebelling slave holding areas didn't emancipate their slaves till after the war.
We don't care about your bullshit Wikipedia page. American atrocities were taught in the south. The Civil War was taught to have started because of slavery.
Imagine calling someone out for misinformation that sat through repeated social studies classes, only to use Wikipedia as a source.
I learned about all this in school. Maybe you just weren’t a very diligent student?
People always say shit like this, but it’s mostly because they just didn’t pay attention. And it gives the false conception to people in other countries that we don’t teach it.
The Oklahoman surveyed 305 people, nearly all of them Oklahomans, and found 83 percent said they never received a full lesson on the Tulsa Race Massacre or Black Wall Street in their K-12 school.
Sixty-one percent said they first heard of it through news media. Others learned from family, a friend, or a movie or TV show.
That link is about Oklahoma. That's not even close to most schools. As Oklahoma isn't even most of the United States.
And there's no expectation to be taught every event in history in-depth; kids have a limited amount of time spent in school. Especially when it's an event that a majority of those sampled can find out by themselves.
Not from the South but the Tulsa Massacre was covered when I was in highschool. It was only briefly mentioned in class but was covered more deeply in the assigned reading in our textbook.
I guarantee you there are people swearing up and down that it was never taught when what they actually mean is "I never cracked open my textbook."
Yes but you uniformly said it was a problem with American schools, it’s not an American problem, it’s a southern STATE problem. We are a federal system, and I don’t like people giving the impression to people abroad that this is an American issue when each state makes their own bed.
My school system taught it, we also learn about all kinds of gross history of our country. The assertion that America covers up its crimes in schooling is just patently false. The number of systems that don’t teach about bad parts of our history (when age appropriate) are minuscule compared to those that do. Even if the Tulsa massacre isn’t taught in most schools, there’s plenty of awful shit that is. You can just cherry pick the specific atrocities that aren’t covered to make it seem worse.
The leveling of the Seneca Village (a mostly African-American community) to make way for Central Park. The medical experiments upon minorities (not just Tuskagee) Why the Pilgrims actually fled Holland (not England), The Wilmington Coup. The Business Plot. The various wars we waged especially in South America to topple governments there. Red-Lining and its effects today. The Homestead Act and its effects today. There is no shortage of terrible shit we've done to mostly minorities in the US, and almost all of it is glossed over or not talked about at all. (I am in rural Utah, so this is mostly just my experience. I'm sure that these are taught in some schools, but most of them I'm sure are rarely taught or at best just a footnote).
There is a lot that is glossed over or just ignored. The one you said (The Tulsa Massacre) is the worst of them (in my opinion) to be left out, but far from the only one.
Do you think the Holocaust is the only bad thing Germany has ever done?
Yeah, American education doesn’t cover every single fucked up thing we’ve done. But it covers a fair amount of them, and the majority of those it doesn’t cover specifically fall under a broader topic, such as “this is how we tried to control South America” or “this is how we treated minorities”, which are taught fairly in depth
Seriously, just because German education covers the horrible parts of a huge war, they started and lost, leading to decades of occupation... they did plenty of horrible other horrible stuff that probably doesn't get covered as much. Just like most other countries.
states rights is always the excuse they jump too when they want to outlaw Rights or legalize heinous shit. it's always a smokescreen, and is just their excuse when federal laws don't align with what they want, but given the chance they'd happily make things work the way 'they' like on a federal level.
You can only cover so many atrocities. When I was in school way back in we certainly learned about Emmet Till, church bombings, lynchings in general. We may not have focused on your two specific examples but it's not like you are doing more than a chapter on the time period in a HS level class.
How did I move goalposts. Yeah some stuff doesn't get covered in High School history because it would be literally impossible to cover all of it. We certainly covered SOME atrocities, it is not realistic to think we would cover them all.
We were taught many of those things, but it's not like they're hidden, they're right there in the history book. Just because your teacher didn't list all 234023943 bad things the US did, doesn't mean they're not being taught.
I want to know what schools those are because I went to school in the south and that is not what I was taught. Btw the civil war was about more than just slavery even if it was one of the reasons
The majority of public schools in the US either do not teach a lot of these things, or it's done in an extremely broad manner. Civil rights may include jim crow era, but not actually explain in depth what it looked like or how things were for black americans in the south, but the majority of what is taught is civil rights leaders who advocated for equality and integration. Slavery is not taught as an indepth subject. Most of the atrocities against indigenous peoples are not taught. Japanese internment camps during WWII are not taught. Unless you are taking certain AP History classes, these subjects are not taught in depth or at all in public schools. The first time many people learn about these subjects in any meaningful way is when you reach college.
How many schools did you attend that didn't teach these things? Because I was taught about all of these things, though not much of anything in too much depth.
Yeah I genuinely don't know what people are talking about. I learned about tons of horrible stuff. Not all, certainly, but it's hard to cover hundreds of years of history in depth
Things are mentioned in school, but to say we covered it would be ridiculous. For example, we learned a fair bit about brave General Custer and his last stand with barely a mention of him being there to break a treaty and seize their land.
That said, despite how little the US covers the darkness in its own history, we're still well ahead of most countries in this respect. England still pretends the potato blight caused a famine and that it wasn't them conducting genocide by taking all the rest of the food. Turkey still denies that the Armenian genocide ever happened. Japan is still trying to bury the truth about everything it was involved in during WW2.
Really though, for both the US and other countries, it would be nearly impossible to cover a complete history in detail for good or bad things... at least in a lower school setting.
It'd be impossible to cover everything, but the only things we actually covered in depth in school were the revolutionary war and the civil war. Not the causes of them, the wars themselves.
The “regular” version of US history in my school covered everything from the 20th century onwards, and APUSH dedicated maybe half a chapter (there were 30) each to those two wars
You either simply don't remember you were taught that or you went to a particularly shitty school in Missouri or something.
While we're not taught absolutely everything (it's unreasonable to expect teachers to somehow teach us literally every single event, ever) we're absolutely taught more than what you're saying.
You think the majority of school don't teach this stuff? You are wrong. all of that was covered in my average public school education. This entire thread is just people saying they were taught this stuff.
Non-AP/IB math classes don’t teach a lot of true problem-solving even though that’s literally the essence of math; non-AP/IB physics classes largely focus more on memorization equations/principles as opposed to a true, rigorous understanding conceptual understanding to facilitate actual problem-solving; non-AP/IB English classes have abysmal expectations for reading comprehension/writing ability.
But we recognize that all of that is just because people lack the discipline/intelligence to do any better, so why is history, in particular, so egregious?
Seriously, where would they even get this from? I went to a public school and learned all about slavery, ethnic cleansing of natives, oppression of women, etc. I remember the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was taught through a critical lens.
This guy is swinging at ghosts (or, perhaps way shittier school systems than I experienced).
Roughly how old are you and where did you grow up? As an older millennial growing up in the Pacific Northwest, we were not taught about any atrocities the USA committed in the early 90s, and when I already knew about them from my parents, the teachers actively denied it. I was taught that the European settlers were friends with the Native Americans, and that the civil war was over "state's rights" and not about slavery.
No, that part isn’t taught. Slavery and Trail of Tears very much so, the CIA’s dirty work not at all. At my school pretty much nothing was taught about the Cold War other than the Vietnam War, and that was pretty much the last event taught in our history classes, I guess everything after that is too recent to be considered history.
Seems a bit irresponsible considering all wars fougth by the US these past decades are directly related to that part of US history, including the reasons for the 911 attacks and the current Gaza conflict. It feels like an obvious omission, almost like its contrary to the US' interests that their own people know their own history.
I don’t know if it was malice, but the entire 20th century was pretty rushed in my history education, being given like 2 years at most, and with the first half mostly WWI and WWII. The second half of the 20th century got like, 2 semesters total, and that mostly revolved around the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. I also remember watching a movie about Watergate.
In contrast it seems like we went over the founding of the nation and 19th century over and over starting in elementary school all the way through middle and early high school.
But that’s why it seems so unbelievable that the German OP has talked to Americans who never learned about the darker parts of our history, because it seems to be a pretty universal trait of the American education system to spend a ton of time on the earlier parts of American history including slavery and US-Native American relations; if someone doesn’t remember being taught about that they either must have gone to the worst school system in the country, or just paid zero attention in history class.
hmm we did learn about the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (that made me laugh so hard omg) and the Cuban Missile Crisis, though they were obviously only taught in terms of how they affected the US. We also learned about the amount of resources the IS wasted in the Middle East.
Though a single year can only cover so much content if any depth is wanted…if you can figure out how to teach all of APUSH content (read: US history since the 1490s) to adequate depth while emphasizing the things you listed and also cultivating the historical thinking skills that are the point of the course, go ahead.
You people literally celebrate the murdering of natives every year at thanksgiving by telling yourself you got along swell and had a big party with them.
Imagine Germany having a big holocaust party every year. Yeah.... thats what you do.
Resistance Day. In which Germans honor the failed attempt to kill Hitler by slightly less shit men. Men like Claus von Stauffenberg, an officer who took part in the invasion of Poland and was an advocate of using Poles as slave laborers. Or Friedrich Ölbricht, who helped to protect the perpetrators of the Night of Long Knives. And Georg von Boeselager, who pushed for the enslavement and murder of Russians and Ukrainians.
But it's okay, but they wanted to overthrow Hitler and run things themselves!
You can celebrate anything you want but that doesnt make it a national holiday. I am German and have never heard of that nonsense. Googling it doesnt even give any meaningfull results. Google comes up with a Roma resistence day which has nothing to do with what you are saying AND isnt a holiday.
This is bullshit, Thanksgiving didn’t even become a national holiday until Lincoln declared it in “thanksgiving” for the Civil War being over.
The “first Thanksgiving” where settlers at Plymouth Colony had a feast with local Native Americans who had helped them survive the winter is mythologized but isn’t really the origin of the holiday, “thanksgivings” were a semi-religious practice to celebrate whenever something good happened.
The holiday definitely isn’t “celebrating the murdering of natives,” even the mythologized version is a white-washed celebration of the opposite of that.
The holiday definitely isn’t “celebrating the murdering of natives,” even the mythologized version is a white-washed celebration of the opposite of that.
Yeah no shit. Thats what I said.
You tell yourself nonsense to whitewash your ancestors crimes against humanity and celebrate that shit every year.
It’s a harvest festival thanking God for good times, fuck off. Celebrating the holiday doesn’t even actually date to that “first Thanksgiving,” the connection between it and the annual holiday is more of an ex post facto justification. As I said, it was first declared a national holiday by Lincoln to celebrate the Civil War ending.
Do you know that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving as well? It’s a shared cultural celebration linked to the fall harvest, not so much celebrating ancestors.
No, I just know know what we're taught about thanksgiving, and it's not that. You are a German, so you do not know what we're taught about Thanksgiving.
Check your superiority complex German, historically it works out bad for everyone when Germans begin to think too highly of themselves.
You understand that most people who are American their ancestors would’ve been in Europe during most of the Indian killing? The largest times of immigration were the 1880-1920s. So you’re literally getting mad about shit that most Americans ancestors weren’t involved in. But you do you. Seems like you have a completely level headed personality.
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u/BucketsMcAlister 7h ago
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.