Quote:
Originally Posted by ngdawg
Good grief, people, they're FIVE YEARS OLD!
How many kids start out reading Tolstoy? None. See Spot. See Spot be PC.
In the 13 years of public education they'll be receiving, they'll get the "true history".
In the meantime, give them a little fun time, some dress up and food and find something a bit more meaningful to debate.
I would agree that the woman making all the fuss is being elitist. They're not college kids putting on a insulting play....they're freaking 5 year old babies.
|
Actually, the comparative analysis of high school history books done by James Loewen in
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong shows that most American high school history books don't touch on the negative aspects of American settlement and the colony at Plymouth. It's rare that "true" history gets taught in American public schools unless a student is fortunate enough to have a teacher that is well-educated themselves and has read works by other historians (recently, versus being forced to read such works in college). By and large, however, many instructors of social studies at the secondary level are far too dependent on their teacher's edition to tell them what to teach. It isn't as if the high school classrooms across the United States are full of teachers introducing their students to Howard Zinn.
While I agree about the fun time, there are plenty of other fun activities to be done around Thanksgiving that don't focus on incorrect history. The kids could make hand turkeys or make a piece of art focused around the idea of gratitude. That's what we did in the nursery where I work.