Substitute ‘Communist’ for ‘Patriotic’ education
Patriotic education is less about the specific curricular concepts that are featured in American history classes, and more about a philosophical stance that informs our approach, one full of explicit values and assumptions. It involves an audacious faith in America and tells the whole story of our past, which includes the bad with the good.
The Imaginative Conservative
The Imaginative Conservative
Now, how to maintain that ‘values’ approach and teach the ‘good and bad’ aspects of the past when dealing with imperialism, theft of land, genocide, the subjugation and slavery of stolen tribes, segregation, the McCarthy era, civil rights fights, Vietnam, Japanese internment camps and the like?
Candidates and their sheep are calling for this - the ability to teach only what old white men in government would have us believe. We look back at our immigrant ancestors and tell stories of how languages and song were banned, of how the oppressors switched out a culture for their own, about the poor treatment of immigrants and the attempted bans on education - and we talk about how it’s all so different today. Is it?
