Well now, this is encouraging. Teenagers commit civil disobedience to protest a proposed new history curriculum that would de-emphasize strife and civil disobedience:
Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay.
Yeah, yeah, I know that school curricula have always been political playthings. I came through prison school in one of those “shut up and obey” eras. Learning only the positive, patriotic, authority-respecting version of history and “civics” was oppressive and dishonest — and led anybody with a brain to distrust people who felt such a need to hide reality.
Actually, the propaganda of “my day” was about as oppressive and dishonest as all politically driven schooling inevitably is, whether “right” or “left.” Curricula have swung in all manner of weird directions since then.
And yeah, yeah, I know the answer is get rid of government schooling. But in a country that was born in defiance of law and authority, I still can’t help but think this is a smile-worthy development.
This is a great story!! Very hopeful indeed. But it is really astonishing how some of us lived through the gov. school indoctrination. I went to primary school on Marine bases all over the place, and we had a lot of “patriotism” and “shut up and obey” teaching even in the 1950s. The worship we were taught of Eisenhower and Lincoln, etc. sickens me to this day.
The key to my learning about self government and responsibility was my mother, a self owner before the libertarian thing was even being talked about. 🙂 The world needs more mothers like that, naturally, and I did my best with my own children, even though they went to gov. school as well. Wish homeschooling had been available then… we never heard of it.
I hope it starts a trend. It’s not about civil disobedience, but about honesty.
History can’t be changed to suit the politically-correct. Those who don’t want to read about slavery in our past, or who deny the existence of the Holocaust, are just closing their eyes to reality.
Young people have more access to the truth today – through the internet – and they know much more factual material than adults. Kids recognize BS when they hear it, they know when they’re being used, and they have less patience with those who try to manipulate them than any generation heretofore. They have the potential to be the generation that kills political influence, and allows the future to go forward in a more natural progression of good will.
While growing up, they’ve seen an inept Obama break his word multiple times, the NSA invade their privacy, the FBI and CIA commit atrocious acts of torture and killing for political purposes or material gain, the re-emergence of active religious wars (and a Crusade of lies and excuses in order to maintain those wars), and a cancerous growth of military action by police in their own towns and cities.
These young people are the future – and I hope they send a message to the present that they won’t tolerate any more guff like we’ve been handed in the past.
Stories like this give me hope for the future. Not all of our young
people are insane…
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/26/these-high-schoolers-invented-something-ingenious-for-wheelchairs-that-could-win-them-100000/
People have been making/inventing stuff since the first club as a weapon was invented. It’s only since the latest Maker Movement has actively encouraged children to participate, has made it a special movement.
This is a good thing as it encourages kids to tinker.
Here’s the right-wing take on the class walkouts. Am I in Malkin’s camp? I don’t know, as I’m not as well-informed as I’d want to be before stating an opinion.
But … my suspicion has been that these kids didn’t come up with this on their own. And putting the brakes on a progressive agenda in history education sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not surprised at all at wailing coming from left about this. Not that I condone right-wing indoctrination in schools either. But I’m keeping in mind what it is that is that these kids are supposedly wanting to have retained, and I wonder how many of them really understand it.
Here’s some more coverage.
http://co.chalkbeat.org/2014/09/18/jeffco-parents-fear-censorship-as-board-considers-new-curriculum-panel-ap-history/#.VCHIzCtdVBN
I have to chuckle, because my HS history classes in no way resembled the classroom depicted. They were serious. And, I have to add, devoid of any political agenda. But then, I wouldn’t expect Lutheran HS in the 70’s to be anything like public shools of today. (And, the curriculum wasn’t much concerned with American history either.)
And, one more, then I’m off to have fun!
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/26/Colorado-Teachers-Union-Organized-Student-Walkouts-With-NEA-Grant-For-Organizing-Specialist
[And putting the brakes on a progressive agenda in history education sounds like a good idea to me.]
There is ALWAYS an agenda. The kids are ALWAYS pawns in a power-and-plunder struggle.
[Learning only the positive, patriotic, authority-respecting version of history and “civics” was oppressive and dishonest — and led anybody with a brain to distrust people who felt such a need to hide reality.]
Which is a point in its favor. For the kids who have no choice but to attend schools, I prefer crude indoctrination to sophisticated indoctrination, because the cruder stuff is more easily detected by the kids.
“There is ALWAYS an agenda. The kids are ALWAYS pawns in a power-and-plunder struggle.”
You took the words right out of my mouth.
It’s certainly possible (per jed’s links) that the kids were just unknowingly providing a little extra noise for teachers who don’t want to be performance-paid. But school officials who want to use a history curriculum to encourage patriotism and obedience to authority are playing political games of their own, using the kids.
There ain’t no such thing as an unbiased curriculum. But there’s certainly such a thing as trying for an honest and balanced view — and you’ll never see such a thing in any government school. It’s always been about controlling what the kids learn to achieve some political objective. Liberal, conservative, a pox on ’em all.