Education

Thursday September 29, 2005 - 9:08AM EDT

New York already requires children to learn about the Irish famine, the Holocaust, the Underground Railroad and "a great deal" about slavery, said state Education Department spokesman Jonathan Burman.

Candace de Russy, a State University of New York trustee and national lecturer and writer on academic issues, said she believes the state's commission opens the door to endless group advocacy-oriented legislation.

"Inherent in it, Jews will decide how to teach the Holocaust, the Irish the Great Famine, Armenians the Turkish genocide, Indians the French and Indian War, and so on," she said.full article

A "great deal". Who is that person kidding. For sure the whole issue of what to teach in history is hairy. But if there is one thing that there should be no arguement on it is slavery. More profoundly, the lack off a complete story taught in schools about slavery. All you learn is, slavery was bad white man evil black man suffered. Until I took the history of slavery course in college I had no idea how shortchanged I was on slavery in my previous education. I'd argue a more complete slavery education in our schools would do much more than anything we do today to eliminate discrimination and hate. The whole idea of slave culture is never taught in schools and that is so important to slavery and to modern times. We just ignore a large group of people's cultural additions yet we live with them everyday, ignorant of where they came from. The attitude of founding fathers toward slavery is much more complex then what the average student is taught. It is usually either ignored completely or they say this person owned slaves or this person was an abolitionist. Those kinds of statements are so shallow and worthless that it just engenders more ignorance about what really happened. I think it should be a required course in school curriculums. A whole course dedicated to slavery. It has to be one of the most important time periods in human history. You can't look back anywhere else in history and see something like that go on for such a long time. It was like for 300 years another species of human lived on the planet. Then some people say that there is already too much to teach. Which I personally think is garbage, as they really just need to develope more efficient teaching methods then some of the crap they get away with now. If there is too much they need to let slavery which is of great importance replace some of the lesser crap they fill our heads with. Like the Lewis and Clark fiasco or some other stuff. Critics of expanding slavery curriculum need a course in slavery themselves. Damn fools.

The issue of reparation comes up every now and then. When I think about reparations all I can think of is what a shallow incomplete solution. I think about the people and companies that exist today as direct beneficiaries of slaves. Don't know how many there are, maybe just a few but there are some no doubt. I guess on a broader note I have ambivalent feelings about the money of people who have attained it by less than honorable means. With the caveat of it being great wealth.

I had something else, but I forget now.