The worksheet says the USSR was a fascist dictatorship :Stalin-bummed:

  • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Uhm, are teachers in the US allowed to just make up whatever ridiculous shit they want and use it in class?

    • PeludoPorFavor [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      more or less. some states are better or worse than others.

      IIRC there was a textbook in the south that was like 'natives decided to leave' when the colonizers came LOL

      • HamManBad [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I think the viral photo was a (horrifyingly recent) Canadian textbook, if that's what you're referring to. Though I wouldn't doubt it also happening in the south.

        • Chapo0114 [comrade/them, he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          No shit, I was taught till middle school that the natives made room for and welcomed the European immigrants. Then when we learned about the Trail of Tears I was like, what? A good state history teacher in 8th grade told us all the ugliness involving the origins of black americans, including stressing the Civil War being about slavery, and a good US history teacher in high school cleared up the rest of the internal white-washing, native relations and Japanese internment camps among them.

          If not for those two, I'd have become an adult thinking the US did little wrong ever. Still had to undo "communism if fine in theory but bad in practice", "the USSR is evil", and "Japan had to be nuked" on my own though.

          • HamManBad [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Lol did you have to watch that "elbow room" video from schoolhouse rock? Real lebensraum shit

        • PeludoPorFavor [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah I think you’re right. I agree that I would be surprised if there were similar things in the states tho

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Short answer, yes. I had a history teacher who made us all read BOTH Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead..

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Those are works of fiction and therefore fundamentally not history. Also aren't they like, stupid long? How did you have time for that? We didn't even have time to cover the fucking 20th century

      • SoyViking [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Did it work or did it just make the students realise how thoroughly horrible Ayn Rand and her sociopathic ideology was?

    • BoringOrganHarvester [he/him,use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      They get to be creative sometimes, last year my history teacher, when talking about the communist manifesto, said socialism won’t work becuase there is no inventive for people to work, and stated it as a fact

        • LangdonAlger [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          In theory, the history dept chair, if brought to their attention, could counsel a colleague for teaching sloppy history. So could the admin assigned to that department. A parent could complain. In my experience, this would be chalked up to academic freedom and shrugged off to focus on "real problems." Oh, the board that accredits the school would be the real big boss to come down on this, but I don't have much experience with that

          • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            So in theory, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time as a student, you could have been taught that Belgium started WWII by invading Portugal, and that's that?

            • LangdonAlger [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              There are state standards that are tested on, but it's pretty loose. It also depends on the school. I taught in a poor school in the hood, which gave me a lot of academic freedom cuz as long as my kids were actually in the classroom (not wandering the halls, not being sent to the principal's office), admin didn't care what I taught for the most part