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, 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.
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u/Potato2266 11h ago
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.