comment: >
  
  Real Native history would be cool to learn.
context: At my school, American history is where I learned about these things. >
  
  Learned about it in the way that native Americans were the “bad guys” >
  
  You obviously didn’t pay attention in school… >
  
  I did, just when i was in grade school they taught it in the way that it sounded like Christopher Columbus was a better person than he was and the Natives were the “bad guys”. >
  
  Unless school has changed all of that was taught in the same classes when I was young. >
  
  There are only so many hours in a school day but libraries worth of history >
  
  Sadly, a large portion of what is taught outside of regular history is just not that noteworthy. It shouldn't be surprising that people who had limited opportunities to make history didn't make much noteworthy history, but that doesn't fit the desired narrative that people want to hear today. >
  
  Pretty much when I was a student back in the Stone Age, we generally only got as far as the Reconstruction period. Some ambitious teachers made it to the Great Depression, and it was comprised mostly of the broad strokes and general ideas of all the preceding events. So, you're right, it would be very difficult to cover figures much below American presidents. >
  
  My oldest got up to the Civil War over and over and over again. He was super excited to be able to choose a history class that covered a different time period in college. >
  
  A subset of a topic is not a separate topic. It’s all history. What we choose to teach as general history and as a specific subset under a framework that helps put American history within a certain perspective and interpret it ( namely intersectionality in this case) is still all history.
  I wish people would say what they really think about this issue, which is that they think intersectionality should not be taught in highdchool. Then we can actually have a real discussion about why they think so. >
  
  Intersectionality in the marxist-feminist sense? Because famous black inventors are taught. But most history is about the people who made massive impacts in the shaping of a society. Who exactly fits that criteria intersectionality to you throughout the entirety of American history that doesn't amount to grievance politics or tenuous connections to events? >
  
  For some people, the vision of the future we are working toward is one where we can abandon the nonsense differences and focus on the important human questions, on our global ambitions.
  For others, the vision of the future is some sort of eternal status quo, where nothing really changes aside from who holds the talking stick.
  We need to be educated in our past, and we need to see the ways in which we perpetrate injustice today, but at some point we have to stop reinforcing these racial divisions so that we can move past them.
  The constant argument that "if it's not in your face you'll forget it and go back to being secretly racist" is exhaustingly cynical. It's the "original sin" of the faithless.
  And while I don't hold beliefs in the supernatural, I do have a faith, but it's in folk. In people and our ability to do great things without resorting or reverting to our most crude, tired neuroses.
  To circle back, an American history class that doesn't touch on slavery is as much a disservice as one held hostage to the self flagellation of the racially apologetic. Mass atrocities were perpetrated, they should be studied, known and understood. But there's more to American history than that. You take the good with the bad, and what you get is just the truth.
  Teach that thing. >
  
  Race isn’t inherently bad, though. Racism is. Race is simply a specific descriptive aspect among humanity. Acknowledging issues regarding racism doesn’t mean we’d be better off denying or ignoring the concept of race itself. >
  
  More white men had more considerable accomplishments in American history because they had more opportunities, while women and racial/ethnic minorities probably had to work twice as hard just to scrape by in their fields, if they even managed to get in their field at all. >
  
  It also gives the GOP a framework to exclude these topics from curricula altogether. >
  
  I hope you're not being disingenuous here. I will bite:
  What you're advocating would work in a society when you're not dealing with apathetic White Educators, who poorly teach on such enclaves of US history... Or don't even do so with INTENT due to a bruised racial ego, oersonal prejudice, or subconscious bias. And I'm not speaking on all White Educators but to those it applies too. I had a few racist ass marginally intelligent teachers from back in the day who should not be remotely teaching anyone for that matter, including white children. White women teachers were by far the most prejudice back then for me as a female of colour. 
  My most supportive and notable teachers were all men. Ironically enough. They really pushed me into an ivy level education. So much for sisterhood 
  We have the same issue in Canada. African Canadian history, 1st Nations Indigenous Canadian history, Asian Canadian history has been practically non existent in the curriculum. Or glazed over. It was only in University where people have more enlightened access to this information. I was born in the 80s. Went to school throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Canada didn't have a black history month until 1996 lol!
  Back then. Minority based history was sparsely or not even remotely taught. You'd think other races did fuck all when it comes for building the foundations of Western society. Whether it was consensual, or non-consensual... Shoot there are a handful of ingenious patents and inventions held by minorities unbeknownst to the general public. Thank God for university.
  Only now things have slowly started to change in elementary and highschools.
  It's February now. And Black History Month has officially begun. OP tell me your post isn't some snide move due to this month of recognition making you feel "left out". It's the shortest month of the year. Get over it. Stay tuned for international Women's Day in March, and  Asian History Month in May. 😂🤷🏿‍♀️ >
  
  You realize classes like African American studies aren't just a list of contributions and "go team black" rallies right? It's sad and funny how people think professional education is some whim they can out-think from their couch. Teaching is pedagogical (approached scientifically) and these half-brained opinions always sound like a teenage man telling a gynecologist how vaginas work. >
  
  I think it's the difference between positivity and toxic positivity.
  I think there are a lot of minorities who appreciate these sort of things. And the more those people are uplifted, the better things will be for everyone, including the minorities who are assholes >
  
  I agree. Not american, so I cant speak for your education system, but here in Portugal I noticed something interesting while I was at school.
  During history/biology/physics/whatever class, when we talked about something invented or discovered by a white man we would always spend some time, even if only a few minutes, getting to know the guy, at least the basics like his name, country, what inspired his work/research and some of them we were expected to know some more in-depth details. However, when it came to women, lgbt people or people of color, it feels like either they'd be mentioned in like 3/4 words (ex: this thing was invented by Miss X, thats it, not more development on who she actually was) or not even named at all.
  The biggest example for me personally was Alan Turing, this dude pretty much fathered the field of computer science, yet in all of my computer science related classes he was either not mentioned at ALL or just quickly named and thats it. Meanwhile, for my physics classes, I learned quite a lot about Einstein and many details of him as a scientist and person, same for Darwin in my biology classes. I also noticed that in our literature classes in high school we studied a lot more male authors (i cant even remember a single female author from high school) and we explored a lot of their works and learned about their personal lives, for female authors you'd read a small poem or test and thats it (for the record, there isnt a lack of good female authors to study in portugal).
  I don't know if I was just very unlucky with my years of school + uni, or if this is actually a common problem in my country (personal anecdotes say it probably is). Of course, I also have no clue if this is intentional or not, it could be an innocent mistake.
  But yeah, minorities should be treated equally to non minorities in education. >
  
  History is basically advanced storytelling. We should just make up some new shit and start over. 🤷🏾‍♂️ >
  
  I agree let's repeat it >
  
  They’re not separate, but the separation in how these people were treated and how little power they held compared to others, cannot be overlooked. In order to actively create change in the present, the separation and inequality of the past must be addressed. >
  
  I agree completely, and I was taught about slavery and the trail of tears and the Iroquois confederacy etc. that people claim we weren't taught in school, and I grew up in rural poverty. >
  
  Sounds like a convenient way to avoid teaching about the history and contributions of those demographics to me. 
  Why not have a everything all at once class that's 8 hours long and covers home ec, algebra, music, AND biology at once? >
  
  that argument is like me asking you for $1, and you reply, "why don't you ask for a million dollars?" if you have a counterpoint to my argument, I'd love to hear it, though. >
  
  No, it is a valid point that the differentiation of the historical topics you mentioned is relevant to our modern perception. It serves the purpose of specifying that minorities and women DID have a different lived experience than was depicted by mainstream culture of their time. They WERE “othered” and ignoring that history does no service to that reality. It’s just avoiding uncomfortable feelings and watering down facts. >
  
  This is like saying zoology shouldn’t exist because there’s already biology. Or astronomy shouldnt exist because there’s already a physics class. You can’t cover everything in a single year, and given the fact that America was founded as a white supremacist enterprise the vast majority of American history is going to cover white males because in terms of the things covered in an introductory history class (politics, wars, and economics) are going to be dominated by stories of white men. That doesn’t mean women, blacks and other minorities were doing nothing for 300 years, it’s just that their activities don’t usually fit into a curriculum that has to cover so much already. >
  
  
  America was founded as a white supremacist enterprise 
  
  Sorry. My eyes literally glazed over at this point. Now suffering from uncontrollable gag-reflex. Send help. >
  
  Were non white people allowed to vote when the country was founded? Were non white people allowed to hold political office? This isn’t even a political point it’s just a fact, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still a white supremacist country but it was literally definitionally founded as a white supremacist society >
  
  
  Were non white people allowed to vote when the country was founded? Were non white people allowed to hold political office?
  
  Were they able to do these things in England? If not then it's a moot point. Your comment is worded like race relations in England were great and America was founded as a way to get away from it. >
  
  But then how will we patronize others while getting HR-points for ourselves? Have you even thought this through? >
  
  But then how would Republicans ban it? >
  
  exactly >
  
  While it is taught in school as an overall kind of thing. We only teach the whitewashed version of history. 
  To learn real history, you have to take extra or advanced classes. >
  
  History is a vast topic with a relationship to everything that has ever happened in the world.  I believe high schools teach history with a "mile wide but an inch deep" approach, in that student get a broad overview of what is considered significant, mostly based on those Texas standards for school books.  We can absolutely improve and enhance what is taught here, and those history lessons should absolutely be inclusive.  But high school history curriculum just offers a taste of time and place, not the whole dish.
  Higher education (and personal study outside of schools) offers students an opportunity to drill deeper into certain subjects which were briefly touched upon, if at all, during high school.  There are college course on European history, Medieval history, French, Russian, Ancient Greek, History of Western Civilization, Art History, WWI, WWII, Early World history, etc.  There is no reason we shouldn't have courses focused on African American, Native American, and Women's history and studies, so students can learn more about the subjects that interests them.  I'd say we need those courses more than ever. >
  
  Where did redditors go to school that they think this isn't taught?  I went to a shitty public school in the 90s and we learned about the contributions of minorities to history every year, starting in elementary school.  What absolute shithole are you people from? >
  
  Here's an intake: Gringos should not focus solely on their story.
  That's how you get entitled ignorant people believing they have suffered everything and that's unique to them.
  Once gringos find out about the Holocaust, then it's all over, they can't claim crap about oppression. >
  
  It sounds like you must have some specific historical individuals or events in mind you feel American schools have been overlooking. Would you mind sharing them with the class? >
  
  Black people should always be mentioned by name when discussing American history. >
  
  Woman made a massive contribution if not the most important. They answered their natural call and produced [multiple] offspring and took care of rearing them thereafter, something women no longer do.