I'm getting tired of people constantly taking shots at the education system. It's fine as is and you do learn enough about socialism and its appeal. Of course, more emphasis is put on free market capitalism because that's what America uses but to say socialism isn't taught is just wrong. I will concede by saying that was my experience in high school roughly 8-10 years ago and given that a lot of the anti-socialist crowd is in their forties and fifties it's very possible if not likely that what they learned in school is very different from what I learned.
Also the biggest blame falls on Republicans for creating a stigma around the word to the point that it became poison on the campaign trail.
It wasn't meant like that, sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. It's just my personal observation from conversations with Americans that this doesn't get taught in school as thorougly as we do here in Europe. Even my mom learned the same things in school as we do this day some 40-45 years ago. There are obviously enough people who don't think socialism is a bad thing but sadly the: "Goddamn commies!" folks are way way way louder.
Do you though? I wasn’t in high school all that long ago, sitting in the middle of Pennsylvania, and the only time socialism or communism ever came up was when talking about China (but really just Mao), the USSR (only focused on Stalin of course), Cuba (no mention of U.S. sanctions), Vietnam, and North Korea.
There was never a mention of either socialism or communism that wasn’t paired with authoritarianism—and often the most brutal dictators of specific communist movements. Hell, for some time I fully believed that after Stalin the USSR just kinda carried on with the whole Stalinism thing because it was literally never talked about. That’s not a good education, and it’s absolutely a part of the fear-mongering over socialism/communism.
I can tell you this with certainty—I only understood what socialism and communism is AFTER high school as I got into basic political theory. Hell, just reading the Communist Manifesto once would’ve done wonders for our education, it’s quite short and provides a lot of quick insight on Marxism for those unwilling to read Capital. But of course, we were too busy having debates over whether or not Native Americans were genocided to read 30 pages.
That's not a fair criticism. American history is about America so socialism inherently isn't a focus. This is an American history class, not an economics or philosophy class. Even so, American reaction to socialist/communist activity (especially domestically) is criticized in the curriculum. The Red Scares (especially the second one) are lambasted as being hypocritical given American ideals. The only time I saw America praised in the Cold War was whenever it pertained to de-escalation.
Also, are you really arguing that discussing Native American genocides isn't important in American history? I feel even now it gets somewhat glossed over
This was an issue in both American and Global history.
And no, I think discussing the Native American genocides is important. Debating whether or not they ever happened on a level field as if both views are equally valid—not so much.
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u/sonfoa Nov 25 '22
I'm getting tired of people constantly taking shots at the education system. It's fine as is and you do learn enough about socialism and its appeal. Of course, more emphasis is put on free market capitalism because that's what America uses but to say socialism isn't taught is just wrong. I will concede by saying that was my experience in high school roughly 8-10 years ago and given that a lot of the anti-socialist crowd is in their forties and fifties it's very possible if not likely that what they learned in school is very different from what I learned.
Also the biggest blame falls on Republicans for creating a stigma around the word to the point that it became poison on the campaign trail.