I've known that since high school, which means for 50 years now. It's just interesting to see someone saying it out loud. And bragging about it.Hmmmmmnmmmm. https://t.co/7im3EpGaM0
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) August 11, 2021
I've known that since high school, which means for 50 years now. It's just interesting to see someone saying it out loud. And bragging about it.Hmmmmmnmmmm. https://t.co/7im3EpGaM0
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) August 11, 2021
I wonder what the percentage of high school graduates who could tell you why the 4th of July is celebrated and get it right, who could tell you the branches of government, who could tell you what the Trail of Tears was, etc. Unfortunately even well taught history doesn't seem to make much of an impact. On the other hand, I'll bet lots of them could give you chapter and verse over some TV series.
ReplyDeleteI learned about the Trail of Tears from Dee Wallace. "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee." Never learned about it in school. "American exceptionalism" is how you get taught the Civil War was about "State's rights," not slavery. It's how you learn the Founding Fathers were good White Christians who established a Christian nation. It's how you erase the people who were here, the slavery on this continent that started with Columbus (literally, not figuratively); how you erase African slavery, ignore the brute labor of the Chinese that built the transcontinental railroad, etc., etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteMaybe learning real American history is what started me down the path to "radicalization." Except I don't consider myself a radical. I just consider most people sadly benighted, and education, public or private, is largely the reason. But it's the education most people want their children to have, so maybe I am the radical, after all.
Realizing belatedly I meant De Brown. I think. Getting old is ruining my memory for trivia.
DeleteDee. And I officially give up.
DeleteIf everyone would at least come up with an official spelling of all of the common names instead of having three or four merely common variations for many of them, maybe enforcing a strict spelling of the less usual ones might make sense. It's like the "rules" cooked up by the prescriptive language scribblers Jan Freeman talked about in that thing I linked to yesterday, they came up with so many eccentric distinctions that no one could possibly remember them.
ReplyDelete