History (or not)

We moved so often when I was growing up. The history classes, from school district to school district, were wildly out of whack.

It seemed each year, each school was doing the Revolutionary War and/or the lead up to it. EVERY year I was taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America (WRONG!). That generic “Indians” invited the pilgrims over for a happy Thanksgiving meal and celebration (WRONG!). The fable of Pocahontas (NOPE!). The Puritans left England for the “New World” because they wanted religious freedom (NOT the whole story). Paul Revere’s ride (he was just one of three riders). And on and on.

Anything I learned about the Civil War, slavery, the World Wars was from my father or picked up from popular culture. And, guess what, I’m in my late 60s and only recently found out that there was a war in 1812. All this time I thought it was just an overture by Tchaikovsky (FYI – this was the first album I bought with my allowance. At 13 years of age I was real keen on Tchaikovsky. Also too CANNONS!!!).

Freedom Riders

Ya know how I learned about the money grubbing, callous, soulless factory owners? Reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in 8th grade English class (this was also when I began thinking about becoming a vegetarian). How I came to understand that all people in positions of power must be kept on very short leashes and never fully trusted? I read Orwell’s Animal Farm in 6th grade. That war, even “good, noble, righteous” wars were horror shows? I read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five in 10th grade.

Worker’s rights? I learned about unions from the songs of Woody Guthrie and that old look for the union label TV ad song (sorry, can’t find a link to it).

I learned about the Suffragettes because I liked Bowie’s song Suffragette City (yeah, it has fuck all to do with the Suffragette movement but I've always liked a good tangent). Jim Crow, Vietnam, Watergate, the second women’s right’s movement? I was a kid but alive and aware during it – I lived through it.

Ida B. Wells

Native Americans? I read about the American Indian Movement during the occupation of Wounded Knee and then read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. What I was taught in school was pure fairy tale propaganda bullshit. I only know about Black Wall Street because I follow a lot of Black women on Threads.

What are kids taught in history classes across America today? Do they know that Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico in 1835 was largely due to Mexico abolishing slavery and Anglo-Texans weren't real happy about that? Are they taught about Juneteenth? Wounded Knee I and II? Ruby Bridges? Emmet Till? Ida B. Wells? Do they learn about the Freedom Riders? 

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
~ Robert Heinlein

Study the past if you would define the future.
~ Confucius

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
~ George Orwell