I have been thinking about this recently... When I was in school, there was a lot of ground covered about U.S. history. The country I live in, not just about the good, but also the bad. One of the teachers actually read from a book called: "Lies My Teacher Told Me", which is about all the historical inaccuracies about U.S. History from textbooks and what really happened: I.E: The Native Americans getting malaria infected blankets. It also was spoken about the Vietnam War and the brutality the U.S. soldiers did in the war, including water boarding and what happened after the Civil War to African Americans. Some in very graphic detail. My German teacher even showed a film next to a Holocaust one about why the U.S. refusing a boatload of Jews from Germany around the start of WWII to make us debate if the U.S. knew about the Holocaust and why nothing was done if they did. I recently have been rewatching about WWII and the Holocaust, including Pearl Harbor. And I heard a lot of comments mentioning about how dark the U.S. crimes were and how they were never or rarely mentioned. I also remember one time a group of German students came to the U.S. for the week and someone asked about how they remember the Holocaust. There was an awkward moment and they barely spoke about what they did. Note: This was only one class of German students. So it made me curious: Do you think that kids should learn about the dark side of history of their country next to their triumphs? Do you think it should be something that should be fully covered? Or should it not be mentioned, or if so, barely?
I think everything should be said... and yet we need to "make the ideal" before we break the ideal, I don't think is bad to tell the "good side" of your country history, if you are latter told the "truth", because it is easy to say that people were "evil/mad/ignorant" in the past because it is difficult to put one self in others shoes.. we don't really know how it was to live in those times with different morals and ethics... so I don't want to raise children that think "omg, everybody before me were so stupid, why can't they see what was obvious?" Like... we can say about Nelson Mandela's "terrorists attacks" (and why was he arrested), and the person who hears it will no longer pay attention to his pivotal role towards social equality of black and white people at Africa... So I think we need to "make heroes" before "destroying them" so people will not become cynical. ---- As for the "Dark side of my country History"... not many years ago (1964-1985) my country was under a Dictatorship regime done by the army, many latin american countries suffered from this, before that we had a President-dictator until 1945 (that had sent political arrested jews to Hittler ;O). Brazil was not part of any major wars outside our borders, so all our "evil" was mainly done towards ourselves (and our natives) . Corruption is the main problem nowdays even though we are optimistic towards the future.
True... Before high school, a lot was talked about the "good" of history and what happened. The U.S. had a few things covered that was dark: IE: The Native American treatment, but it was never really covered in depth about what happened in the U.S. that made our country dark until I was in high school. The depth of what happened on the other side was never really touched upon until 9th grade and higher. Hell, I don't think it was even covered in 9th grade that much. There's also the debate about history going too far. In my school we learned about an experiment called the "The Third Wave", a film based off a true story on a teacher's notes who took a classroom of students and in five days nearly developed another Nazi party. (It's actually very interesting to watch.) He at the end had to end it himself because he realized how out of control it was spiraling before his eyes in a few days, including attacks on other students, people turning each other in for not showing loyalty to the wave, uniforms, etc... He said the line of reasoning was to teach the students why the Holocaust and the Nazi's happened like it did, why the country fell into such a state and why they didn't care about what was happening to the Jews and others. Actually from what I heard, a lot of the students spiraled into depression and killed themselves due to what happened, in the end he actually showed footage of Adolph Hitler and the Youth Group to do a comparison and show what they were doing.
Here' s a few tidbits that were probably left out of your history books. Yes, the US army liberated France during WW2 and yes, we are thankful for that. US soldiers also raped our women big time. Check De Gaule' s page on wikipedia and you' ll notice he had to thwart quite a few assassination attempts to take back the reigns of the country. It' s common knowledge amongst those who lived all this that the US had plans for France, you didn' t help us entirely out of the goodness of your heart. I spoke with a German student myself, apparently the social and psychological factors that led to the rise of fascism are heavily emphasized in Germany. Hate speech in general is highly reprimanded. We don' t keep it in check as much in France, but we do. Certainly more than in the US where it' s almost completely unbound. But yeah, to make a point, it is really important to remember the bad stuff. You don' t learn from your success, you learn from your mistakes.
I think it is extremely important, history is there to learn from and never repeat if something goes wrong. Plus, if all we do is teach our kids of the sparkling clean country they are growing up in then it's a lie, we shouldn't shelter our children (by this I don't mean show them graphic images of the holocaust when they are 4 as that would be wrong but to tell them it happened is quite important). If all we ever do is tell our kids of the good we've done and the bad everyone else has done, it will teach them that we are better than other countries when we are in no way better, we are all the same, we all have our bad aspects and we all have our good aspects. It would create a "us and them" mentality which creates conflict and bullying between nations. Perhaps it's not this extreme but it is the way things would head, I recon. I know the UK isn't squeaky clean, and it's like watching "12 years a slave" or something similar, being shown the brutality of how people were or still are treated and being told they are your ancestors. It makes you very uncomfortable and ashamed of your heritage but that's good, it means we have grown up and learned from bad experiences and taught our children why they were wrong so they can grow up with a more healthy mentality in how to treat other people.
