How Schools Create and Prevent Events Like Charlottesville

Published August 23, 2017

The recent violent events surrounding Civil War statues in Charlottesville, Virginia and ensuing protests, defamations, and vandalism at other sites across the country could have their root in what is taught, and not taught, in our nation’s schools, The Washington Post reports:

“The Civil War lessons taught to American students often depend on where the classroom is, with schools presenting accounts of the conflict that vary from state to state and even district to district.

Some schools emphasize states’ rights in addition to slavery and stress how economic and cultural differences stoked tensions between North and South. Others highlight the battlefield acumen of Confederate commanders alongside their Union counterparts. At least one suggests that abolition represented the first time the nation lived up to its founding ideals.

The differences don’t always break down neatly along geographic lines.

“You don’t know, as you speak to folks around the country, what kind of assumptions they have about things like the Civil War,” said Dustin Kidd, a sociology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Lessons on the war and its causes usually begin in the fifth through eighth grades. That means attitudes toward the war may be influenced by what people learned at an age when many were choosing a favorite color or imagining what they wanted to be when they grew up.

The effect may not be obvious until a related issue is thrust into the spotlight like this month’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the resulting backlash against Confederate symbols.”

The Post just now realized what kids are taught in schools has consequences? Good job, WaPo. And now, since what kids were taught in government schools seemingly contributed to the Charlottesville disaster, how about we put two and two together and get government out of schooling?

SOURCE: The Washington Post


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