Re: thanks for the new Nazi Youth -- Unofficial Chris Cornell Forum

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Date Posted: 14:00:30 03/06/06 Mon
Author: chrys
Subject: Re: thanks for the new Nazi Youth
In reply to: GarlicSoul 's message, "thanks for the new Nazi Youth" on 11:13:17 03/03/06 Fri

hmmm. still don't know why my other post isn't on this thread?!

i don't think you can ever just teach facts. there wouldn't be that much left to say. history is an ongoing grounds for arguments among historians, who are still trying to gather all the primary sources and backup information they can. so not only would it be dry, it would be barely anything. historians still disagree on the basic facts about columbus. was he from a rich family or a poor family? there is evidence suggesting both. students should know this, that history isn't a set in stone thing, it is something people argue about. and i don't even believe that true objectivity exists, or if it does, it is extremely rare.

and what good would it do a kid to learn that we fought the civil war from 1861-1865 if we don't know why? think about it, if that's ALL you know, we fought this war when, it means nothing at all. there is no reason to distinguish it from any other war. and why teach one subjective reason and not another? that is my problem with the argument above, i feel that SOME subjective things would be looked at as okay, just because they have always been taught, whether or not they are true or have any evidence backing them up. as i said in my earlier post, no one would blink an eye if that teacher had said democracy was the form of government that did the most good for the people. that is ENTIRELY subjective, and historically not very defendable.

i see that you're saying all opinion should be left out, but i wonder if we always realize that some of the things we pass on aren't just accepted opinions anyway, subjective in their own way. i don't think you can say, some reasoning for the civil war isn't subjective and some is, IF there is evidence to back up both.

also there is very much bias in the "facts" that are taught. it is FACT that columbus and some of his cronies committed genocide upon arrival in this "new world," but that fact is not taught. it would not put us in a good light. we are not taught the facts about the bombing of dresden for the same reason. so even if you boil it down to just facts, they are still skewed.

and we did kill innocent germans, that's fact, and kids should know that. it's not as simple as, oh yay we stopped the holocaust. they should know the reasons why we went into that war too, so they can weigh out those things themselves. if all you teach is oh yay we stopped the holocaust, THAT's biased, that's included cuz it makes us look good, while other facts that don't are exluded. that in itself is totally subjective, where a teacher's or administrator's or textbook writer's thoughts on what impression to make are presented. that kid is going to make decisions about going to war in the near future, often before college, so i say let them know it all, know why we have gone into different wars, and what the costs and effects have been, so they can make rounded decisions on if they sign up or not.

personally i have never thought of it as a parent's job to teach critical thinking. what about all the kids whose parents don't think critically? sure, teachers don't always either, but there could be things in the curriculum. and what about the parents that never learned things themselves b/c they grew up in the same educational system, and may never have been taught that there was any of these things? what about all the parents that never paid attention in history or cared about it and so forth? teachers are there b/c they are supposed to have the background and knowledge to pass along.

my problem is that i think kids are taught a mixture of facts and opinions specifically tailored to engender patriotism. instead, i think kids should learn all about history, the fact that it's not set in stone, the fact that that there are ALL sorts of opinions and speculations about why this or this happened as it did. i don't think they should have to swallow a teacher's opinions either, but they should learn how to think for themselves, how to research, how to evaluate evidence on things such as, is this a primary source? if not where do i find one? what was this source's bias? and how about this other person with their different opinion, what was their bias? who funded who?

a person can vote at 18, senior in high school usually. by then they should be able to think through issues, with of course their own bias based on their own life and town and upbringing and whatever else might influence them. but by then they need to understand the REAL ways of how the branches of government work (because it is fact that the checks and balances arent' the same as they were when it was begun), and what the real meanings are of the positions they will be voting for. also by the time a person is entering high school, they are starting to form their own opinions on things anyway. it is not a teacher or parent's job to do that for them, but to show them how to do it for themselves.

and if social studies is to include current events, which i completely believe it should, as if we don't connect the two, why teach history at all, you can't avoid the issue of human rights. that is something that comes up all the time in the news. and i think you are splitting hairs really to say its' different than civil rights. is it okay to teach about rosa parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus and not teach about hunger strikes in india for independence? (or hunger strikes in guantanamo bay for that matter). if you are going to talk about the UN, you are going to talk about human rights. if you talk about labor (which is a huge part of this country's history), you'll talk about human rights. and there is no reason that it shouldn't be looked at how our country's policies historically and currently, affect those worker and human rights around the world. otherwise a student doesn't learn context, doesn't learn global interactions, will think that a country exists in a vaccuum, and that will not produce an informed citizen ready to make important choices about who they will vote for, whether or not they will sign up to participate in a war, how they will think about the world around them. by high school they are ready for that, they are craving it, i just mean developmentally, and there are plenty of parents who don't have the background to give it to them, just like there are plenty parents who can't teach their kids trigonometry. that's why we pay teachers.

personally, my parents did a lot better on the trigonometry aspect of things.

my history classes in high school were awesome, with all different teachers. my fresh year was the only yr we did world history, but we had assignments like to split into five groups and each argue that our subject (either economics, politics, government, etc) was the main cause of the fall of rome. that way we got to think about things from all five of those perspectives and draw conclusions. there was no bias in that b/c it was divided up randomly. in US history, we simulated the real process of a bill becoming a law, like actually h ad to each write a bill about school policy and try to get it passed. we were assigned (from a hat) whether we were in the house or senate and what party we belonged to. there was a whole point system like if our bill was passed we got ten extra credit points, if it was a bill we cosigned it was five, if it was from our party, it was three, something like that. even had another history teacher come in and play president so we had the whole veto thing to work with. we also had an assignment once to get in groups, pick random people out of a hat from a certain era, and put on a short skit of those people interacting. i was cornelius vanderbilt, lol. during the 1996 election we had to each write a paper about who we would vote for if we could and why, and then did a whole section on where ideologies come from. our teacher brought in countless primary sources. instead of reading in our history books that FDR was sworn in in 1933, we read his speech. we read frederick douglass' views on slavery and women's rights. on a lot of issues and debates, we read things from lots of conflicting points of view, and had to present them randomly, like not based on what we thought, but to do a good job finding the reasoning for either way. i think b/c of that i got a pretty good foundation, and definitely took it in my own direction, as i'm sure the other kids in that class did as well, probably not the same as mine. i never took history in college, and my parents definitely couldn't have supplemented that stuff if it hadn't been taught in school, and in an interactive way w/other kids. so when i graduated, i was ready to vote, to think about issues, to say okay where is this side coming from, and i also remember a lot more about history than a lot of people my age, b/c i had context, i might know someone who played that person in a skit, or remember when we read their speech, or when someone in class condemned or applauded a certain move. i can have meaningful discussions about people and times in history, b/c i remember, and i remember b/c they had meaning, they weren't random names and dates and places, they were people, events, totally complex with passion to their stories whether i agreed or not, they were part of this huge drama of human existence.

that's all for now, lol.

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[> Re: thanks for the new Nazi Youth -- light, 14:24:58 03/06/06 Mon [1]

I think it is unfair and inappropriate for a High School teacher to make statements like "capitalism as a system " [is] at odds with human rights." or "The United States was "probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth". Though it helps that at the end of his speech he says "You have to figure this stuff out for yourselves. ..." it's still using his position in the classroom as the voice of authority to promote his individual viewpoint. Although allowing students to question his pronouncements might seem to give a balance to them, the playing field isn't level. When using examples in his speech that students likely have barely heard about (unless their HS history curriculum is a lot more advanced than mine was), let alone have in-depth knowledge of-- such as American involvement in Colombia's civil war to U.S. attacks on Cuba during the 1960s, he is setting up an atmosphere of 'debate' that is already defeating to those who would question his argument.

Tangent:
I hated 'social studies' classes when I was a kid cause a lot of it really just seemed like remembering names and dates, a skill which eludes me to this day. Also, when I've looked back on those classes, I saw most of the history we learned was in terms of battles, which might have stimulated some kid's minds, but drew zero interest in mine. By high school there were a lot more 'controversial' classes (I had lots of commie teachers), but by then I was so tuned-out or under-educated in the basics it pretty much flew over my head. I probably wasn't the only one. Each of those kind of classes had a few highly enthusiastic students, all in agreement with the teacher (this being NYC?), and the rest of us were all pretty quiet throughout the term.

I believe that to participate in higher learning exercises, students need to have a solid foundation of knowledge to draw from before truly coming to their own conclusions. I believe that facts can be taught in a way that is reasonably unbiased, and at the same time not 'dry'. Maybe teaching history as studies about how men and Women lived in various cultures and times, and approaching their concerns, would be more interesting to more young people. It's the underlying stories of the populations that make sense of the battles and changes in power-- those aspects history lessons traditionally like to stress anyway.

"Why is it so controversial to agree on a set of fundamental human rights and to support those in our schools? "

Like the right to life? ;)

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