3 Big Mistakes the American school system makes
We don’t fully acknowledge the history of White supremacy from its founding to the present day…
… and when kids are taught incomplete history, they’ll never get the full story. Or, when they do they won’t have the framework to understand how the pieces fit together.
The less you know about history the easier it is to think you’ll be on the right side of it.
The History of America is one of change yet it is also a history that badly does not want to be changed.
US history’s progress is taught and remembered as if it was constantly and invariably upward
The context around many of America's pillar moments have been watered down and whitewashed over time. For example, US history education usually goes a little something like this:
Slavery ➔ Civil War ➔ Slavery Ends ➔ Civil Rights ➔ No Racism ➔ Black President ➔ The End
The way history classes are taught lead to a big blur between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement.
“It didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters It didn’t cost the nation one penny to guarantee the right to vote But now we are dealing with issues that can not be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and under going a redistribution of economic power.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We DON'T CONNECT THE DOTS TO THE PRESENT
For example: The Black and white wealth gap is as wide as it was in 1968.
[RESOURCE] Washington Post: The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968
Housing and education systems are still segregated.
When US history is taught, it often trails off after the Civil Rights movement and how white supremacy gets adapted for the next half-century is rarely discussed, and in many cases not at all.
[RESOURCE] YouTube: Exclusive: Lee Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
More Facts That Show History is Not Being Taught Correctly
A recent poll showed that 48% of Americans were not at all/not very aware of Juneteenth
(Source: The Harris Poll)
There are no national social studies standards to mandate what topics or historical figures students must learn about
(Source: CBS News)
Out of 50 states, 7 do not directly mention slavery in their state standards, only 2 mention white supremacy, while 16 list “State rights” as a cause of the Civil War.
The United Daughters of The Confederacy campaigned for schools to adopt textbooks that would accord full justice to the south.
This Elementary School in Wilmington makes students do “Slave Game”… in 2019
Imagine what it feels like to be a black kid in today's classroom, because it’s not just the history that hurts, it’s how you’ve been made to feel while you learn it.
In 2017–18, about 79 percent of public school teachers were White
(Source: The Condition of Education 2020)