For generations, children have been spared the whole, terrible reality about slavery's place in U.S.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

but some schools are beginning to strip away the deception and evasions

Pacing his classroom in north-central Iowa, Tom McClimon prepared to deliver an essential truth about American history to his eighth-grade students. He stopped and slowly raised his index finger in front of his chest.

“Think about this. For 246 years, slavery was legal in America. It wasn’t made illegal until 154 years ago,” the 26-year-old teacher told the 23 students sitting before him at Fort Dodge Middle School. “So, what does that mean? It means slavery has been a part of America much longer than it hasn’t been a part of America.”

It is a simple observation, but it is also a revelatory way to think about slavery in America and its inextricable role in the country’s founding, evolution and present. Ours is a nation born as much in chains as in freedom. A century and a half after slavery was made illegal — and 400 years after the first documented arrival of enslaved people from Africa in Virginia — the trauma of this inherited disease lingers.

But telling the truth about slavery in American public schools has long been a failing proposition. Many teachers feel ill-prepared, and textbooks rarely do more than skim the surface. There is too much pain to explore. Too much guilt, ignorance, denial.

It is why, just four years ago, textbooks told students “workers” were brought from Africa to America, not men, women and children in chains. It is why, last year, a teacher asked students to list “positive” aspects of slavery. It is why, even in 2019, there are teachers in schools who still think holding mock auctions is a good way for students to learn about slavery. Misinformation and flawed teaching about America’s “original sin” fills our classrooms from an early age.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/08/28/teaching-slavery-schools/?wpisrc=al_special_report__alert-local--alert-national&wpmk=1

[rurallib]

1. There was never any connection between slavery and current race problems in the US

Slavery was always taught as something that ended in 1865 and everything suddenly got better.

[JI7]

2. black history was always slavery freedom from slavery, jim crow, rosa parks

king's dream speech and passage of civil rights.

but not all the things in between. and for today things like discrmination in housing which was a big reason for wealth gap .

[Liberty Belle]

3. As a white person who went to school in the '60s & '70s, I did learn that slavery was awful.

My public school education, coming during the Civil Rights era, most certainly did teach how slaves came in chains, families were torn apart, people whipped, tormented or even killed. I learned about the slave auctions and the underground railroad with brave leaders like Harriet Tubman. I learned that the South's economy was built on cotton and slavery, and that the Civil War was about protecting the economic system that relied on slaves.

We must certainly saw the parallels between the bigotry of those who wanted to prevent desegregation and take firehouses to protesters, and about the KKK rearing its ugly head. We were taught about the hard-fought battles to win passage of the Civil Rights Act, and in between, the festering hostilities especially in the South.

That's not to say it was a perfect education but certainly enough that everyone I knew (in Calif.) believed slavery was immoral and wrong, and that discrimination based on race was wrong, too.

My elementary school was lily white but middle and high school were integrated, with busing bringing inner city African American kids into my high school.

The problem with our education system began when right wingers got hold of textbooks in many states and began putting in fiction or omitting truth, and in Democratic held states, the wingers pulled their kids out and put them into private schools and later, charters without adequate state oversight.

The kind of statements you reference above were never, ever spoken in any public school I went to, and never should be spoken in ANY school. There was nothing positive about slavery and you are not a worker if you're kidnapped in chains and sold to the highest bidder.

What we did not hear enough about, however, was the decimation of Native Americans, who suffered genocide -- that side of the story was almost entirely whitewashed out of the history books we read that talked about hard-working Indians at the missions here in California, for instance, without revealing that many were enslaved or that they rebelled and burned down the San Diego mission at one point -- not exactly willing workers.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. If my kids were back in High School

I would give them The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, by James Bradly, to learn about the history of racism in the US.

On the success of his two bestselling books about World War II, James Bradley began to wonder what the real catalyst was for the Pacific War. What he discovered shocked him.

link to Amazon page.

https://tinyurl.com/y2ra9xot

[3Hotdogs]

5. When I was teaching, I assigned passages to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Roots was available at the library so extra cred to whoever took it out, showed it to me and answered specific questions on it.

[ManiacJoe]

6. Yes, schools are often very lacking on this subject.

The USA was one of the last countries to get into slavery and one of the first to get out of it.

[a la izquierda]

7. The US was one of the last countries...

In the Western Hemisphere to end slavery. Only Brazil and Cuba took longer (at least in terms of the largest countries to have slave systems).

And as for it being one of the last to “get into it,” I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Last in relation to what other countries? Spain’s major colonies? If so, of course. The Brits didn’t get a good handle on mainland colonialism until nearly a century after Spain conquered Mexico.
I’m confused. I could just be misreading your post. I have stomach problems and can’t have coffee right now, so everything is a little hazy. 🤣