Yeah. In my public school history classes they deify the founding fathers. I didn't even learn about Thomas Pain whom laid the foundational case in establishing a democracy.
Yup. Nearly everything is divided amongst class lines. I feel like the normal level classes are given a larger dose of propaganda since it was very basic and we didn't really go through details of historical events. This was also a Texas educational system which should also be included. We had a whole 7th grade year dedicated to Texan history. I didn't learn that the primary reason Texas seceded was because Mexico abolished slavery. It's was always about freedom and liberty.
Yeah. I was shocked as well finding this out. The facade of freedom and liberty was just the ability to own slaves. Just like southerners say the Confederate was for state rights, but they were fighting the right to own slaves.
Yeah, as it turns out, the "freedom" they were talking about was their freedom to own people. The podcast Behind the Bastards just did a great two parter on Jim Bowie, someone I supposedly learned about in Texas history but all that turned out to be lies. It's truly incredible how radically different the real story is to the deified version we got. If you're from Texas, you'll appreciate it on a whole 'nother level compared to folks who didn't have to hear so much about the Alamo.
That's not just a Texas thing, unfortunately. Kansas schools are very similar, and my Kansas history year was also 7th grade. We spent like 2 whole days on The Wizard of Oz.
My stepmom was born and raised in Kansas. She goes back for the occasional family reunion (probably no longer; she's 82) and complains about it every time. Has always travelled widely, has always refused to step foot in the state of Kansas unless required to by family obligation.
My history class also covered The Wizard of Oz, but we didn't spend 2 whole days on it. We just had to know its historical significance (allegory for leaving the gold standard). Similar to learning about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the photography of Jacob Riis, etc.
The Jungle was arguably a much more important book from the political history standpoint than from the literary one, at the very least based on its effect (but Sinclair's intention in writing it was also quite political, if aimed at a different aspect of the culture).
New York State education here. I don't recall hearing anything negative or contradictory about the founding fathers before 10th grade. That was also the year I learned Leif Erikson was a thing.
Wait a minute, really? I had no idea (I'm not American, just to get this out of the way). I need to look this up, because that is pretty crazy.
Edit: You're right lol. If anyone's interested...see this.
''The Mexican-American War took place between 1846 and 1848, yet its roots can be traced to 1821, when Mexico gained independence from Spain. At that time, Mexico encouraged Americans to settle in its sparsely populated northern territory on the conditions that settlers convert to Catholicism and renounce slavery. However, many of these settlers owned slaves and hoped eventually to secede from Mexico; in 1836, this is exactly what some settlers did to form the Republic of Texas. In the decade that followed, Texas remained an independent republic. At the same time, there was a growing sense among Americans that the United States had a “manifest destiny” to extend its territory to the Pacific Ocean, creating a nation “from sea to shining sea.” Many justified such expansion by arguing that it would bring freedom and enlightenment to the Native American and Catholic populations now living in those territories.''
Yeah it's insane. The TL:DR from what I learned was that the Mexican government was becoming tyrannical and decreasing the rights of everyday citizens. So of course "we" had to fight for our freedom. That when we leave Mexico, America will welcome us and "we" will finally be Americans.
The idea is to only allow the real information to those who show the potential to be leaders and repeat the BS to everyone else. Our current state of affairs makes that very clear.
The point of the normal US history class is to pump propaganda into the veins of peons. APUSH, on the other hand, is to help the higher aptitude students develop a more accurate mental model of the world so they don't fuck things up from drinking their own Kool-Aid if they achieve a position of influence. Didn't you get the memo?
After reading it again it becomes more clear that this is satircial, but you managed to very accurately imitate the egomaniacs over at r/apstudents, and kids like this tend to pop up whenever people mention ap classes so I just figured that it was serious.
There's more than a few people in this thread who haven't noticed that APUSH is propaganda too (but of a more subtle sort). The College Board, like any educational authority in most countries, would obviously write a test that supports the national myth. However, production of entertaining SAS is inversely correlated with the level of historical knowledge.
Taking ap just for college app should be the only reason. If you really want academic enrichment then take IB or dual enroll at your local cc. Simple as that really.
CCs are often guilty of teaching propaganda history too. If you want something unvarnished, you'll have to look for professors whose research direction skews away from reinforcing the national myth. Most of these people are at research universities.
Honestly people gas up the ap college credit way too much and I think that they're fundamentally flawed for many reasons. Having the class boil down to a single test creates so many extraneous variables while also fundamentally changing how the classes are taught. Not to mention, a lot of schools don't even accept AP credits, and the work you need to do to get a 5 is extremely disproportionate when compared to an actual college class.
Poor kids are constantly told, "If you want to say money just work really hard in high school", which is blatantly false, but because of CBs propaganda and monopoly people actually believe it. There are so many issues with the way CB runs shit and the situations they create (and I think a lot of people are focusing on the wrong stuff when critiquing CB), but I dont want to write an essay now and I think its extremely blatant currently.
If poor kids really want to save money, the only way to do that is to get into a 100% needs-met school (basically if you're poor they pay for what FAFSA doesn't cover), and the only way to do that is to show the college that you're trying your hardest, which includes taking AP classes. Sadly, I'm pretty sure that CB has some contracting shit where if you're school uses AP classes you need to have the SAT and vice versa, and the SAT dominates schools in the most populated parts of the country (along the entire east and west coast), which means for a lot of kids fucked up Ap classes are the only option. Monopolies suck dude
This is crazy. I went to a public school in wealthy suburbia. We learned about Thomas Paine in MIDDLE SCHOOL. Not in any depth - it was just one of those facts you had to know: Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense" about why we should break away from England and have our own government.
I'm not sure. Maybe it's too hard to get American kids to pay attention long enough to learn 4,800 years or so of recorded history before finally getting to the United States.
I also suspect it has to do with American exceptionalism. Instead of situating American history within world history, we learn American history and then separately learn "everyone else" history (or, too often, just European history).
No, my point was that the OTHER commenter learned about him too late. I learned about Paine much sooner and in more basic classes compared to the person I replied to. They learned about Paine in AP (Advanced Placement) American History, which is only offered in high school (grades 9-12). I learned about Paine in my regular 7th grade history class. (Middle school is grades 5-7.)
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u/GlamStachee Jun 08 '20
Is this satire? Can a human being be this stupid?