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Mari, the Happy Wanderer's avatar

This was such an excellent and important article, Dolly. It is particularly useful that you give readers a method for how to respond when we read outrage clickbait--and then link to the standards so that we have the opportunity to decide for ourselves before we add to the outrage. And your final point--that when we express outrage without checking first, we get a personal benefit but make the world worse--is so important to keep in mind in all situations.

I did read (well, skim) the linked standards and agree with you about the “personal benefit” issue. I seem to remember reading many years ago that scholars wanted to reinforce the point that enslaved Black people weren’t just passive victims, but fought back in any way they could, and one way they did that was by working jobs to buy their and their loved ones’ freedom. I just reread Beloved for Freddie’s book club, and one of the characters does just that--buys his mother’s freedom by working side jobs.

There is an aspect of the curriculum that does give me pause that is quite different: The curriculum places a lot of emphasis on slavery in other places and times. While it is true that slavery has been a terrible evil throughout human history--and to this day in some places--I think such an emphasis on slavery outside the US risks both-sidesism. It risks communicating the attitude that slavery in the US was a terrible but regrettably normal thing and no worse than what other people were doing.

But the truth is that slavery in the US was unique and uniquely bad for two reasons: that children of enslaved women were also enslaved, and that slave owners routinely broke up families by selling people away from their parents, children, siblings, and spouses. Slavery in other places didn’t operate this way; it was still evil, of course, but the US really did win this particular shameful prize, and a responsible history curriculum will make that clear. Maybe I missed a place in the curriculum where they discussed this? But if not, I think it is a flaw.

Finally, I have to agree with you about the elementary-school curriculum’s focus on the positive. I wish that we on the left weren’t always advocating for forcing the worst, ugliest information on children before they’re ready to absorb it. It’s almost as though these people on the left are upset that children are tootling along in happy complacency and want to wake them up to brutal reality.

I recently got into a dispute with an acquaintance who was angry that Tennessee removed Maus from the middle-school curriculum. (Note: they didn’t ban the book, but they did take it off the required reading list for kids aged 12-14.) I suggested that most kids that age aren’t ready for a work that is as unremittingly bleak and explicit as Maus, and that there are better choices (Eli Wiesel’s Night, for example) for kids that age. She was unconvinced. So I told her about my own 7th-grade social studies teacher, who spent the Holocaust unit telling us the most grotesque, horrifying facts about tortures inflicted on Jews in the camps. We--a bunch of 12-year-olds--couldn’t handle it. We would laugh nervously and make awful jokes. I still feel guilty about this, but at the same time I am still angry at this idiot teacher, who put us kids in the position to laugh at atrocities, because we couldn’t handle what he was telling us. (My acquaintance’s response was that HER son was able to handle extremely intense material at a very young age and would not have responded to the class that way. Good for him! But he strikes me as the exception, and we should develop curricula for the regular kids.)

Please forgive the length of this comment! I love so much how your essays make me think, and I get carried away!

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RMS's avatar

thank the gods, a voice of reason. Agree 100% about primary sources - even the NYT is full of clickwhores determined to spin up the outrage machine

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