It's not that binary a choice. Whitewashing history is what those of us of a certain age were brainwashed with in grade and high school, and even college. And it's what Dear Leader wants to shove down the throats of every school kid in America.
Revisionist history erases the blackboard and starts from scratch, rebuilding a narrative that is much more than just "inclusive", but honest as well. If this is your idea of "villainizing" history, that rather makes you a proponent for whitewashing.
Look at it this way: say you're an HR rep interviewing a prospective new hire. Do you just want the selectively-edited idealized resume, or the real one?
Btw, speaking of history. Your gushing praise for the Continental RR is, shall we say, historically incomplete. RR building was neither novel nor new, and this project stands as a model for how not to build one. Both ends of it were rush jobs, employing thousands of workers with an appalling mortality/injury rate. Both were major land grabs that later led to several large investment swindles. When the lines met, the different gauges of the two tracks meant people and goods moving in either direction had to unload and reload at the point of connection. And even before 'completion' both lines had to be almost totally rebuilt due to shoddy construction and massive safety issues. And the graft and corruption in the financing was a national scandal. With proper cost accounting and regulatory oversight, taxpayers could have paid for two such RRs, instead of having to pay for the one twice.Now, your assignment is, explain why teaching the downside to this is 'harmful'.
Maybe it was because I grew up on NY state in the 1960s/1970s, but we actually got an education and not the rah-rah-rah Ameurica bullshit that maybe much of the country was getting. Junior high and high school were set up this way:7th and 10th grades: New York state history8th and 11th grades: US history9th and 12th grades: World history
In NY history we learned about (among other things) the local native American population and all about the various tribes, and not in a bad way.In US history we learned about both the good and the bad In world history it was similiar to US history in that is wasn't all Amurica first...
except in 12th grade where the teacher was a rah-rah proto-TrumpistShe excelled in tying everything to the US, and as this was during the Viet Nam War, she used the excuse that Viet Nam is in the world to pontificate on how aownderful it was and how Nixon was a God among men.In the last week of school, I and a friend of mine, a black kid, decided toppose her on this shit, and we were summarily ejected from the class. And oh, did I mention she was a racist and bigio?This became a big problem as this meant we could not graduate (seriously).
Fortunately, my mother raised hell with the vice principal, whom she knew, and got us both reinstated. She didn't necessarily have to do this for my friend, but she knew that was the right thing to do. My friend always appreciated my mother after that (as did his parents and silbings).
I'm sure that things were and are different in oher states, but I guess that we got lucky.
As soon as I heard Donnie’s MAGA slogan I thought he should drop the “again”. I’ve studied American history and the history of most of the rest of the world. None of it is very pretty but as far as the US goes, when was it ever great for all the people? Never. I hope we can make America great someday but we’ve got a long way to go. And we are going to need a lot more socialism than we have now (and we have quite a bit now). We need to teach our children right and well and Donnie Boy ain’t the one to do it. Ignorance might be bliss but it is not a course in most schools.
A Londoner named Robert Fields Howard wrote in 1897 that he had been bemused by the US obsession with the War of 1812. “To us it is the merest incident in our long and bloody history, but to America, judged by the attention it receives from the writers of school histories, it is of more importance than the whole of the colonial period.”
Howard was horrified by the textbooks of the late 19th century, calling them "absurdly unreliable as history, though doubtless stimulating enough to national vanity.”
He noted, “after studying the school systems of several States between New York andMinnesota, I have concluded that the object of the United States Government is not to teach history but patriotism.... to manufacture Jingoes.”
He described a pugnacious six year old he encountered in New York, who sang him a patriotic tune and then said menacingly that England " had better not interfere with us . . . She’ll get what she got from General Washington.”
I don't know whether six year olds have changed, but New Yorkers sure haven't.
Making me a proponent of whitewashing, makes you someone with reading comprehension difficulties. Did I whitewash the TRR? According to you, just about anybody could have designed and built a RR that went from near sea level to 7300’ elevation and down again. I’m guessing you missed the downside effects that I MINIMALLY listed. But I guess you’re the only one familiar with the trials and tribulations of the workers who built the RR. (I’ve crossed the Sierra hundreds of times, including on the train. I’ve also spent time on Cape Horn. I’ve done the reading. I get it).Fairly obvious to me that in addition to jumping to conclusions, you’re also a B western movie advocate of American history. Your good guys all wear white hats. Your bad guys are obvious five minutes in.A guy who’s that broad minded would never stoop to classifying others quickly, would he?
Couldn’t you go yell at the school board of the new school district you moved to? I mean somebody has to decide what to teach our kids about railroads, if you’re so convinced that you know how it should be taught, run for school board in whatever town you want to live in
If the majority of funding was local as it once was. Alas, it isn’t. But, no matter where you live, unhappiness with the local school board—complete with plenty of screaming—is the norm, not the exception.
I hadn't thought about it in terms of the Internet in quite that way, but it makes sense. I also think it's why we've seen such a strong streak of social justice and activism in today's young people. They don't know a time before the Internet—even the kids that were born when Facebook was founded are 16 today. I'm only 29, and smartphones weren't a thing until my senior year of high school and no one had one until later than that (the original iPhone was expensive—hell, they still are). I can't imagine being in high school when everyone had a smartphone, but it's all they know.
Social media has certainly had its downsides, and maybe I'm just desperate for something to feel optimistic about, but the woke teens give me hope for the future. It's opened people's eyes to the world in ways that wouldn't have been possible before smartphones with cameras/video recording and social media. You can't unring that bell.
1) Overselling the TRR, which wasn't quite as impressive as advertised. The US had been building RRs, over major rivers and through mountains, for some 30 years prior. The scale was somewhat larger, but otherwise it required no new innovates or technology.
2) Yes, it is rather difficult to paint portraits of Great (mostly white) Men with their warts without diminishing the beauty of the picture. But then, knocking idols off their pedestals by depicting them as they really were does force us to use more nuance, and accept higher levels of ambiguity, in our understanding of things, far above the willingness or ability of most people to do so.
3) The 'objections' you raise to teaching diversity pretty much speak for themselves.
4) I'm an east coaster, which means my sense of (national) history is more steeped in the Colonial, Revolutionary, and early Federalist eras, particularly the Philadelphia/South Jersey region (with periods in New England). Whatever westerners did to blacks, Natives, the working class, immigrants, etc., was pioneered and practiced here first, and longer.
Buried in my notebooks from college is a quote from Henry James, a grandson of the John Adams, who was one of two teenaged private secretaries to Lincoln during the war. Decades later he wrote what is probably the most accurate and honest description of Americans ever put to paper. Far from being the proud and noble citizens of that hackneyed 'shining citie on a hill', he wrote "Americans are just another greedy and grasping people."
The problem with this county is that we're too full of ourselves; it's long past due for U.S. to take a more jaded, cynical, and honest look at who and what we are, and the mostly squalid and bloody road that made U.S. what we have become. If it means "revisioning" the shit out of US history to give U.S. a sense of humiliation and shame that has matured the longer established countries, so be it. After all, it's just telling the whole story, not the sanitized, self-congratulatory Cliff Notes version.
Ever been across the Sierra? It can snow 8 months of the year, often in dozens of feet at higher elevations. Water sources are limited.Supplies had to be continually shipped in. Oh, and the rain at lower elevations flooding the newly sonctructed cuts and newly constructed bridges. In addition to the Chinese laborers( hundreds of whom died doing the work) who hung off cliffs far above the American River to construct a single track at Cape Horn it took another group of Chinese 15 months to drill through 1600+ feet of rock to complete the tunnel near Donner Summit (7250: elevation, BTW) But, according to you such feats were ordinary and to be expected. Been doing the same stuff for years. No sweat. We'd been there and done that. Why did it take so long?I raised objections to teaching diversity? In your mind, perhaps. Makes sense though since you were awfully quick to label me. a whitewasher based solely on my minimal comments on the TRR.,And you did prove a point. You know a villain when you see one. Right?
He couldn't get through a 5th grade civics course; the reading list is too long, and far above his level of comprehension.
Can you separate out only "ethnic history" from other history? Even "white" has changed meaning over time.
Great idea if all 6.2 million kids now in school lived in the same district for all their school years. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men....
It's not that binary a choice. Whitewashing history is what those of us of a certain age were brainwashed with in grade and high school, and even college. And it's what Dear Leader wants to shove down the throats of every school kid in America.
Revisionist history erases the blackboard and starts from scratch, rebuilding a narrative that is much more than just "inclusive", but honest as well. If this is your idea of "villainizing" history, that rather makes you a proponent for whitewashing.
Look at it this way: say you're an HR rep interviewing a prospective new hire. Do you just want the selectively-edited idealized resume, or the real one?
Btw, speaking of history. Your gushing praise for the Continental RR is, shall we say, historically incomplete. RR building was neither novel nor new, and this project stands as a model for how not to build one. Both ends of it were rush jobs, employing thousands of workers with an appalling mortality/injury rate. Both were major land grabs that later led to several large investment swindles. When the lines met, the different gauges of the two tracks meant people and goods moving in either direction had to unload and reload at the point of connection. And even before 'completion' both lines had to be almost totally rebuilt due to shoddy construction and massive safety issues. And the graft and corruption in the financing was a national scandal. With proper cost accounting and regulatory oversight, taxpayers could have paid for two such RRs, instead of having to pay for the one twice.Now, your assignment is, explain why teaching the downside to this is 'harmful'.
Maybe it was because I grew up on NY state in the 1960s/1970s, but we actually got an education and not the rah-rah-rah Ameurica bullshit that maybe much of the country was getting. Junior high and high school were set up this way:7th and 10th grades: New York state history8th and 11th grades: US history9th and 12th grades: World history
In NY history we learned about (among other things) the local native American population and all about the various tribes, and not in a bad way.In US history we learned about both the good and the bad In world history it was similiar to US history in that is wasn't all Amurica first...
except in 12th grade where the teacher was a rah-rah proto-TrumpistShe excelled in tying everything to the US, and as this was during the Viet Nam War, she used the excuse that Viet Nam is in the world to pontificate on how aownderful it was and how Nixon was a God among men.In the last week of school, I and a friend of mine, a black kid, decided toppose her on this shit, and we were summarily ejected from the class. And oh, did I mention she was a racist and bigio?This became a big problem as this meant we could not graduate (seriously).
Fortunately, my mother raised hell with the vice principal, whom she knew, and got us both reinstated. She didn't necessarily have to do this for my friend, but she knew that was the right thing to do. My friend always appreciated my mother after that (as did his parents and silbings).
I'm sure that things were and are different in oher states, but I guess that we got lucky.
It's kind of hard with the ever-present excrement smell that wafts from all WH staff.
As soon as I heard Donnie’s MAGA slogan I thought he should drop the “again”. I’ve studied American history and the history of most of the rest of the world. None of it is very pretty but as far as the US goes, when was it ever great for all the people? Never. I hope we can make America great someday but we’ve got a long way to go. And we are going to need a lot more socialism than we have now (and we have quite a bit now). We need to teach our children right and well and Donnie Boy ain’t the one to do it. Ignorance might be bliss but it is not a course in most schools.
A Londoner named Robert Fields Howard wrote in 1897 that he had been bemused by the US obsession with the War of 1812. “To us it is the merest incident in our long and bloody history, but to America, judged by the attention it receives from the writers of school histories, it is of more importance than the whole of the colonial period.”
Howard was horrified by the textbooks of the late 19th century, calling them "absurdly unreliable as history, though doubtless stimulating enough to national vanity.”
He noted, “after studying the school systems of several States between New York andMinnesota, I have concluded that the object of the United States Government is not to teach history but patriotism.... to manufacture Jingoes.”
He described a pugnacious six year old he encountered in New York, who sang him a patriotic tune and then said menacingly that England " had better not interfere with us . . . She’ll get what she got from General Washington.”
I don't know whether six year olds have changed, but New Yorkers sure haven't.
https://scholarworks.umt.ed...
All white.
I think the pic is real, but the two in front might be being snarky. I think they were really there, unless it's a really good photoshop
Making me a proponent of whitewashing, makes you someone with reading comprehension difficulties. Did I whitewash the TRR? According to you, just about anybody could have designed and built a RR that went from near sea level to 7300’ elevation and down again. I’m guessing you missed the downside effects that I MINIMALLY listed. But I guess you’re the only one familiar with the trials and tribulations of the workers who built the RR. (I’ve crossed the Sierra hundreds of times, including on the train. I’ve also spent time on Cape Horn. I’ve done the reading. I get it).Fairly obvious to me that in addition to jumping to conclusions, you’re also a B western movie advocate of American history. Your good guys all wear white hats. Your bad guys are obvious five minutes in.A guy who’s that broad minded would never stoop to classifying others quickly, would he?
Couldn’t you go yell at the school board of the new school district you moved to? I mean somebody has to decide what to teach our kids about railroads, if you’re so convinced that you know how it should be taught, run for school board in whatever town you want to live in
If the majority of funding was local as it once was. Alas, it isn’t. But, no matter where you live, unhappiness with the local school board—complete with plenty of screaming—is the norm, not the exception.
I hadn't thought about it in terms of the Internet in quite that way, but it makes sense. I also think it's why we've seen such a strong streak of social justice and activism in today's young people. They don't know a time before the Internet—even the kids that were born when Facebook was founded are 16 today. I'm only 29, and smartphones weren't a thing until my senior year of high school and no one had one until later than that (the original iPhone was expensive—hell, they still are). I can't imagine being in high school when everyone had a smartphone, but it's all they know.
Social media has certainly had its downsides, and maybe I'm just desperate for something to feel optimistic about, but the woke teens give me hope for the future. It's opened people's eyes to the world in ways that wouldn't have been possible before smartphones with cameras/video recording and social media. You can't unring that bell.
1) Overselling the TRR, which wasn't quite as impressive as advertised. The US had been building RRs, over major rivers and through mountains, for some 30 years prior. The scale was somewhat larger, but otherwise it required no new innovates or technology.
2) Yes, it is rather difficult to paint portraits of Great (mostly white) Men with their warts without diminishing the beauty of the picture. But then, knocking idols off their pedestals by depicting them as they really were does force us to use more nuance, and accept higher levels of ambiguity, in our understanding of things, far above the willingness or ability of most people to do so.
3) The 'objections' you raise to teaching diversity pretty much speak for themselves.
4) I'm an east coaster, which means my sense of (national) history is more steeped in the Colonial, Revolutionary, and early Federalist eras, particularly the Philadelphia/South Jersey region (with periods in New England). Whatever westerners did to blacks, Natives, the working class, immigrants, etc., was pioneered and practiced here first, and longer.
Buried in my notebooks from college is a quote from Henry James, a grandson of the John Adams, who was one of two teenaged private secretaries to Lincoln during the war. Decades later he wrote what is probably the most accurate and honest description of Americans ever put to paper. Far from being the proud and noble citizens of that hackneyed 'shining citie on a hill', he wrote "Americans are just another greedy and grasping people."
The problem with this county is that we're too full of ourselves; it's long past due for U.S. to take a more jaded, cynical, and honest look at who and what we are, and the mostly squalid and bloody road that made U.S. what we have become. If it means "revisioning" the shit out of US history to give U.S. a sense of humiliation and shame that has matured the longer established countries, so be it. After all, it's just telling the whole story, not the sanitized, self-congratulatory Cliff Notes version.
Ever been across the Sierra? It can snow 8 months of the year, often in dozens of feet at higher elevations. Water sources are limited.Supplies had to be continually shipped in. Oh, and the rain at lower elevations flooding the newly sonctructed cuts and newly constructed bridges. In addition to the Chinese laborers( hundreds of whom died doing the work) who hung off cliffs far above the American River to construct a single track at Cape Horn it took another group of Chinese 15 months to drill through 1600+ feet of rock to complete the tunnel near Donner Summit (7250: elevation, BTW) But, according to you such feats were ordinary and to be expected. Been doing the same stuff for years. No sweat. We'd been there and done that. Why did it take so long?I raised objections to teaching diversity? In your mind, perhaps. Makes sense though since you were awfully quick to label me. a whitewasher based solely on my minimal comments on the TRR.,And you did prove a point. You know a villain when you see one. Right?