I am a white male who went to elementary school through the 1960s

Coming from an area with German backgrounds my school never mentioned The Holocaust. Imagine my surprise when I got to college. If this history blindness or rejection continues we are shortchanging our future generations. We must never stop learning.

thank you for your post. You are on target.

Couldn’t agree more!

I was in high school during desegregation - our schools did not integrate until my 9th grade year. It was pretty peaceful, which was surprising in that small Central Florida town. But then, we ended up with the first Black mayor in the state of Florida, so maybe not that surprising. Even so, the American History teacher still taught us mostly about the Civil War, how "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was Yankee propaganda, and emphasized white heritage by asking for our family trees. I knew that her husband was in the local KKK so was not astounded by her bent teachings. She never even got to World War I or II or the Korean war, much less then current events.

My first year of college - ironically at a small liberal college in Florida (we competed with New College back then for the most liberal college in the state) - I took a course about Black History. It certainly opened my eyes about the rich and somewhat depressing history of African Americans in this country. The text book for the course was "Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America" by Lerone Bennett, Jr. Excellent book, still in print after sixty years. It was originally published in 1962, but it is still available.

I grew up in the '50s and '60s, and learning of the gaps in my education--and we lament the condition of education today!--saddens and shocks me.

My family is/was left-wing, and I can only assume that their own education was as incomplete as mine.

The idea of leaving still more untold history, including history unfolding before us right now, is unacceptable both intellectually and morally.

the history before us now!

they'll believe any bullshit you give them.

Let's go back to medieval days.

themajority of people (essentially all people without power) were ignorant of history (and many other things) - but that point is, they weren't in power.

Somewhere between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, some ordinary ignorant people began to have some power locally. To me, that's when it really got bad. And that's what we are seeing now. It's not just that they're ignorant, and it's not just that they are hateful. It's that they are being grooomed to believe that it is their responsibility to rule and to enforce that ignorance and that hatefulness upon everyone.

I can still remember my advanced placement American history and the story of Manifest Destiny. I can also remember how pissed I was years later when I learned what that really meant. I was and am aware of the white wash and the propaganda. My teachers betrayed me. It took me years and years to feel like I at least had a grasp of reality. That’s what the teachers in Florida and elsewhere are being told to do to their students. I’m not sure the teachers in the 50s and 60s understood what they were doing. The teachers today do.

elderly southern white woman, taught history/civics courses. I had her in 1965 for a civics course. This was the 1st year that our school was transitioning into racial integration. I think we started with about 10 girls (yes, it was an all girls PUBLIC school--the White schools were like that in Macon, GA, and Black schools were co-ed) per class. That idiotic history teacher told our civics class "Don't let anyone tell you that slaves had it so bad. Why, they had plenty of fresh air and sunshine." I think that comment sent me into shock as I can remember it vividly to this day.

I can see why you were shocked. Good grief. The things people will tell themselves to feel righteous. Sort of like today. Sigh.

from a totally integrated HS in Queens NYC Andrew Jackson HS

By 1959, the high school operated multiple academic sessions to accommodate its students. By the mid-1960s, the school had transitioned from a predominantly White student body, to an enrollment that was nearly 50 percent Black, ... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Andrew_Jackson_High_School_(Queens)

There was no such thing as Advanced Placement, but in my Senior year, honor students could enroll in a course named "Problems of Democracy" We learned so much more with wider perspective than other courses. I suppose it was pretty progressive for a public school back then.

I remember discussing Laos,Cambodia and Viet Nam in that class and being very perplexed about the "police action" in Viet Nam. My friends were being drafted and the ones who came back were damaged beyond repair. That year was the beginning in my involvement in politics - protesting the Viet Nam war. I suppose that my experience and exposure to different points of view in high school were not as typical as I assumed.

Oops, wrote this a couple of hours ago - forgot to post it.
Hope it's still relevant.

Jane, while laughing at her brother, said, "Oh, oh, oh, see the funny, funny Dick!"

What would DeSantis have to say about that?

Graduated high school in 1971. There was do much that wr were not taught. But then again, I had a teacher that wanted to teach about evolution, she asked the class first, we were all in.

But no problem, I'd learned it as a much younger kid from Scientific American and the other magazines my family got.

Then in my one semester at junior college, I had a Biology teacher who taught Lamarkian evolution. According to him, giraffes wanted longer necks to reach higher in the trees so they simply grew them. Not a word about natural selection, genetics, or heredity. They just grew them. A year later when my sister had finished her Masters and needed a temporary job while getting into her PhD program, that junior college needed a Biology teacher, so she taught it for a year.

the 60s protests. So, a lot was unsaid.

So I looked everywhere. Made it easy for me to not judge.

Never knew of the ‘riots’ until college

crimes against humanity, (they called it the "DEEP GREEN", what happened, ad nauseum. I'm a native Angelena, though I've lived here in NorCal for over 40 years. I was also taught about the TRUE history of how this country treated the Native Americans & the Africans, (probably because I have native blood running in my veins as well as African blood). Probably why I ALWAYS hated westerns, especially ANYTHING with john wayne in it.

(couldn't stand the violence and we both thought john wayne was a no talent misogynistic asshole with a horrible voice)

although one western (was it a western?) we liked was butch cassidy & the sundance kid (we loved newman & redford & the music)

My Catholic elementary school history curriculum included lessons on the Holy Roman Empire and the American Revolution. I recall a reading lesson pertaining to a short essay written by Martin Luther King, Jr. Enough grist for thought was presented in my elementary years.

I learned a lot even after college from reading this Howard Zinn book. Not sure if that's an indictment of my college education but looking back now I would say so.

Peace

Was a complete world charger.I got to Zinn later.

We did the Revolutionary and Civil Wars about 6 times over the years but never a peep about reconstruction or anything really post 1945.

after decades away. Upon my re-entry, I found Sociology (and other disciplines) had finally discovered W.E.B. Du Bois! The last chapter of Black Reconstruction (an amazing work!), "The Propaganda of History," is all about how "history" had already (in 1935) been spun by white supremacists to obscure the real reasons for the Civil War, justify slavery, trash Reconstruction, perpetuate racist stereotypes, etc.. In the earlier chapters, Du Bois argues America was founded on racial capitalism (based on chattel slavery), and the stolen labor of Black people was pivotal to the young nation's staggering economic success. Black Americans were also indispensable to the Union's victory, and Reconstruction (with all its breathtaking promise) did not "fail" (as I learned in school), but was overturned by white supremacists, with Black citizens then subjected to new forms of coerced labor and oppressive restrictions, resulting in the tragic, ongoing racial disparities today.

My father was a member of the White Citizens' Council in the Mississippi Delta, and my mother was a member of the United Daughter's of the Confederacy. They knew the men who killed Emmett Till. So, I was a bit more knowledgeable than many white people about these issues, once I discovered my family history (and felt the obligation to educate myself)... but there was SO much more I had never learned about (like "convict leasing" ), even at Berkeley the first time around.

That's why the 1619 Project and the AP African American History course have provoked such white backlash. They are dangerous to the perpetuation of all the carefully crafted, white nationalist myths.

Daughters of the Confederacy. I have had a few encounters with them. On a 10 day road trip across the south with my sisters, who are totally ignorant of history. 1st time was at Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis home in Biloxi, MS. I wasn't allowed entry to the home. Could have been something I said? Most likely. 2nd time was at Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, AL, at the time the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust has been removed, the daughters of the confederacy were pissed. They left letters in plastic report covers all over the cemetery, They were comical and frightening at the same time. Never to fear, the Daughters of the Confederacy where there. To follow us all over the cemetery and write down license plate #'s. Whatever. 3rd time was at Rosalie Mansion in Natchez, MS. It was there I was asked to leave and told my "southern card had been revoked", lol I'm from Texas. I committed 2 offences there, I was unable to identify the TWO US presidents portraits. I could identify one but not a second. Oh, you mean Jeff Davis, I simply had to explain, he wasn't a US president, he was a traitor and the leader of an armed insurrection in the US. But the bridge too far, when they toured us through the dining room and said "and this entrance is were the servants brought in the meals" Oh, the "servants", so, what was the average salary of a "servant" back then and how did they apply for the job? The South is beautiful, and I will give them tons of credit for preserving their history. But good lord, a very many of them have still not got over the civil war and live in complete denial of reality.

You are right they are living in "complete denial of reality," but unfortunately their historical myths are considered "real" by far too many, since the UDC and allies have been able to shape the narrative so effectively.

What might surprise many people is that my mother belonged to the UDC in California! (I mean, Bakersfield, but still...) We moved there from MS in 1956, when I was two. My dad (a teacher and principal) had joined the White Citizens' Council in 1954 after the Brown ruling (and Emmett Till was murdered in 1955, while we were still in MS), but my mom joined the UDC after moving to California.

There is new research about transplanted white Southerners-- a white version of the "Great Migration"-- but while Black Southerners mainly moved to northern urban areas, white migrants dispersed more widely, and in areas with less population... bringing evangelical churches and support for hate radio... all of which gave them disproportionate influence on the "ideas" (thus, politics) of their new communities... and these researchers think that is one contributing factor to racist, rightwing politics (and votes!) in non-Confederate states and less urban areas of liberal states.

The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right
https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjad014/7080180?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Not surprisingly., Bakersfield had the last Confederate memorial in Southern California, although the UDC installed it before we arrived in CA. My mom used to leave those UDC meetings, saying, "The South shall rise again!" I really thought that was just a fringe group, ready for the dust bin of history, and did not realize all the racist, traitorous acts they continued to commit, much less foresee the horrific revival of their "values." (I mean, given my family, I knew those ideas still existed, but thought they were slowly dying out with an aging demographic.)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-07-08/last-confederate-monument-southern-california
by Christopher Knight, July 8, 2020

You might have missed it, but the last known Confederate monument in Southern California has been removed from public view. Without fanfare or fuss.

The memorial had been placed along Highway 99 near Bakersfield almost 80 years ago by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, whose specialty was sponsoring monuments to white supremacy across the nation. The unassuming commemorative plaque was part of a bizarre plan to celebrate Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, as “Father of National Highways.”

Three weeks ago, the 800-pound marker was hauled off to a weedy outdoor storage area and fenced off from public view behind the Kern County Museum.

Davis was a stalwart supporter of Black chattel slavery. The former U.S. Army colonel and Mississippi senator initially opposed the South’s secession. But in 1861 he accepted the call to assume the presidency of the Confederate States because he saw no other way to maintain the slave system. Davis owed his own wealth to the forced labor of more than 100 Black enslaved people who worked on his cotton plantation, just south of Vicksburg.

I've learned far more about history, society, our legal system and the like through my kids' curriculum than my own. My spouse confirmed the same is true for them, although theirs was completely non-religious. It's not that our educators & institutions were intentionally incompetent (at least not the secular ones), it's that they intentionally whitewashed, straightwashed, godwashed and greedwashed our society and history until there was no other way to see America than the way they intended for us. That goes past incompetence, I think.

I truly love what California & our state's mandatory education curriculum has become.

US forces collected ears and there was some scalping of Vietnamese soldiers.
We must teach all of our history. There is nothing more important.

it was necessary to prove the body count.

by the time i got there we weren't really interested in accuracy of that count, so that is one atrocity i never committed

This was back in the 90's. My AP US History Teacher was a Republican of the classical liberal bent (you know, the kind that don't really exist anymore), but the curriculum pulled heavily from The American Political Tradition by the left wing historian Richard Hofstadter.

There's no fucking way this course could be taught under the DeSantis standard.

"not without some scars". Not even a smile. She was a great friend.

If they can make you believe a lie, they can control your perspective, and thus, your behavior.

I have a very vivid memory of my junior-year American History teacher telling the class, very emphatically, that the cause of the Civil War was not slavery, but "States' rights!" It took a couple of pretty good college history classes to dispel that idea. But neither high school nor college ever touched on the Tulsa race massacre--I didn't learn anything about it until about fifteen years ago, reading something about the state of race relations in the early 20th century. My constitutional law courses gave me a better grounding in racial history than anything else in my education.

Although I do remember the states rights versus slavery discussion about the Civil War, in general I feel like I learned about most of this stuff. We had the Holocaust, Japanese Internment and Bury My Heart at Wounded knee was no surprise. There were gaps, but I filled in a lot of them later. No European History except as an adjunct to American history and absolutely no Asian history whatsoever. . I loved history and geography, but it seemed obvious that they couldn't hit everything. I figured that's what college was for. I made a huge effort in college to fill in the gaps. I also took history courses at the community college after I got my bachelors. I was bound and determined to get the Vietnam War into my brain. Most of my history courses stopped at WWII, so I had to fill in the 1945 - 1975 total blackout. President Eisenhower who? It was years before I learned that the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs were not the same thing.

I also lived through desegregation in my school district, something no one of any race wanted any part of for the very same reasons. They didn't want their kids going to schools in someone else's neighborhood. They moved some black kids who lived close to the white neighborhoods to white schools and some white kids who lived near black neighborhoods to black schools, but basically moved as few kids as possible. All the moved kids and their parents were unhappy until high school when everyone was in the same high school.

That was in the sixties. Currently, the same area is as segregated as it was before desegregation.

Ken Burns' history The Vietnam War (available in book and DVD--HIGHLY recommend the DVD), and Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History are both excellent. My Asian history was confined to several college papers related to China and Mao Zedong in particular, with respect to relations with the US and Soviet Union. It all fascinates me, but reminds me how much of a gaping canyon there is in essential knowledge and what we get in high school.

I was fortunate that, in that same era, our public school priniplal told my second grade class about Mohawk leader Joseph Brant's activities here in the Revolutionary War. I was hooked, and have studied these events ever since. I have about 100 artifacts from Brant's camp in my collection today. Over the decades, in my studies, I found documentation of people who escaped from slavery following a route with Brant to Canada, while others joined with Brant's forces. I have quite a number of artifacts from where these people camped along the way. I also found documentation of something the neighborhood Elder told us in 1962 -- that during the Clinton-Sullivan campaign, soldiers killed infants (hidden in gardens by their parents) by running a bayonet through them, holding them up, to see "how long they would wiggle." This was in a journal of a soldier kept in the basement of a small PA historical society.

Recently, I did a presentation for a local historical society, titled "Red, White, & Black: Critical Human Race Theory." No one was offended. We have the capacity to study actual history and recognize both the beauty and the horrors of the past.

Later this summer, I will be presenting in another town, about the archaeological history of our region, and how it compares with the oral traditions of the Iroquois. I have 12,000 years in local artifacts.

On a side note: do you remember the National Geographic specials on Louis & Mary Leakey's work at Olduvai Gorge? I have a late friend 's collection, who was working with them, from Levels 1 and 2.

specials with the Leakeys. Groundbreaking!

I grew up in the '60s and graduated HS in 1971; college in 1976. I also went to public school. It seems as though all my history classes ended with the Civil War. Just learned bits and pieces of history after the Civil War. Thus, I knew nothing about the events of Tulsa and Rosewood. Embarrassing to say, but I also knew nothing about the Japanese Interment Camps until someone recommended a fictional book to me, called "Snow Falling on Cedars", in the '80s! The children living in areas of this country that want to "white-wash" history with be in the same boat. Totally ignorant of the events that have led to the current state of our country. Sad.

Most of it was pointless memorization of facts and playing silly games (my 10th grade SS teacher commended me for being the "World's Greatest 7-Up player!" I have no idea what 7-Up even was anymore.

So, in the words of a commercial that was floating around at the time, "I did a lot of reading on my own." I still do.
Teachers in public schools are responsible for covering the syllabus, which is designed to meet the requirements of the school board. I suppose they could go farther, and fill in the gaps of that syllabus when they exist, but most teachers will lament the lack of time and resources to do anything like that on a systematic basis.

Even in college, there were expectations that, if a student bothered to show up for class at all, that was all that was required for a pass, and every course was marked on a curve. Mastery or even nodding familiarity with the material was optional. I got in all sorts of trouble as a grad assistant in the first class I helped with, as I refused to mark that way and caused an uproar among the students. I had to tone it down and just be a "tough marker" (that was my reputation, along with "hard ass" ), but one student told me she appreciated a high mark from me because it actually meant something, which was gratifying.

So I'll be frank and say I really have little sympathy for people who complain that their teachers "betrayed" them, or that they were "lied" to. The material is available, and research is not hard. Getting started can be tricky, some guidance would be useful there. I doubt, though, that at the public school level the teachers would be well enough versed in the subject matter to be on top of the literature. Teachers in my day mostly had degrees in education, not in specialized fields. Perhaps that's changed, now. In any event, I don't think one should expect secondary school teachers to teach everything the student needs to know, that's really not their job. Secondary school exists mostly to train people in socialization and keep them out of the labor pool until they're older. It exists to perpetuate the myths and stories our politicians want the children to learn, to make them obedient and diligent citizens, which is the political definition of "good" citizen. I think it is unrealistic to expect more of it.

-- Mal

None of the 7-up in the lineup in the front of the class usually ever tapped by head, and should I somehow have guessed who tapped me, thereby, becoming one of the 7-up, it usually lasted only one turn as they always guessed correctly that I had been their tapper. Class size of about 27. My face or body language must have given me away...not a very good liar! Head down with eyes closed all over again! No tap this turn.

And boy was I surprised at the troves of History I WAS NOT taught when I got to college.

Like BlueKentuckyGirl, I learned nothing about the Japanese American internment camps in public school in the 1960s- early 70s and I lived two states over from her. I learned about this for the first time in college. Also, I learned nothing during my entire public school experience about the kingdoms of Africa south of the Sahara during the 1200s-1500s or anytime prior to the days of colonization by Europeans. Never knew that one of the kingdoms of Sudan conquered and ruled Egypt for almost 100 years and then lost control of it. Didn't even know there were pyramids, mummies, monuments in Sudan. Never heard of Great Zimbabwe. I didn't even know that there had been Christianity in Ethiopia for well over 1000 years. It's not that the info was not available. It simply was not being taught.

In a drug store clearance pile my dad found a copy of the very textbook, "Exploring the Old World" that I had studied from in 6th grade, but it was the teacher's edition and it was the updated 1974 edition. It was updated to include a few paragraphs about the kingdoms of Ghana, the Ife culture and some of the others and of the library at Timbuctu and other cultural centers. So, someone was at least doing something by then to rectify matters.

But I hated history class back then. Probably because it wasn’t interesting to me. But after I finished college in 2005, I had time to read other books. Howard Zinn was one of the first. The People’s History of the US. Then last year, I read the 1619 Project. I have learned volumes of history right here on DU so I feel more informed now. History class back in the day seemed to cover wars and dates which is hard for the pacifist in me. I hate war. My brothers signed up for the draft for Vietnam and my oldest brother was denied entry because he got hepatitis in high school. Otherwise, he may have been sent. My other two brothers luckily turned 18 after the draft ended. Studying war to me was just too much for me.

Attended an all boys catholic high school in the grand city of Detroit, Detroit Cathedral. We were taught by an order of Brothers I can’t remember the name of. We were an integrated school drawing students from all over the metropolitan area.

Interacting with my friends that went to public schools in the suburbs I always felt that I received a slightly better education than they did. That was then, now I’m not sure I could make that same assessment today.

Our courses included Logic, Critical Thinking, Comparative Religions along with the regular fare of subjects. We were encouraged to question everything.

until i got to collge. I was totally shocked by this, that my people were in those camps.. not my family, they were immune because we were also native Hawaiians and at the time Hawaii was still owned by the Hawaiians.

I learned about the Japanese American interments in college in the late 70s. But I really didn’t understand how horrible it was until later. Thankfully Japanese American leaders started talking about it and brought awareness. My WW2 history through High school never mentioned it and I never knew.

My family were half Japanese and half Hawaiian,,and since the US Navy was using Pearl Harbor, at the Queen's discretion, they weren't about to lock up half Japanese Half natives.. it would have been embarrassing to explain.

was recently in Milwaukee at UWM as part of their Distinguished Lecture Series in April. His book,
"They Called Us Enemies" is phenomenal. It his childhood experience growing up during WWII when in 1942, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were taken away from their homes and placed in camps. That book should be required reading in all high schools. Love George!

Virginia History in Virginia. Been catching up ever since. Just started Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States. Eye-opening, depressing, and fascinating.