Discussion: How One Teacher's AP History Qualms Evolved Into A Conservative Movement

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Discussion for article #228560

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A revisionist historian is like an activist judge: it only counts if you don’t like what they say.

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“Former” teacher tells me that there’s a reason why that’s the case and a motive behind his spiteful and butthurt actions.

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If the teaching of history must be ‘patriotic’ then it
Is propaganda.

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Josh, I know you’re an actual graduate historian, and may or may not agree with this, but here goes:

I have to agree that the current lack of actual teaching of history (and civics) in public schools is pathetic. Most high school seniors could not sit down and draw a time line of events (don’t need the actual dates) from about 1750 to today. Hell, most of them don’t even know whats happened from 1900 to now.
Also, what the hell are critical thinking skills in relation to history? History is over, you need to grasp the events and flow of the happenings.

Of course the School Board members in Colorado are just right wing morons who probably are no more aware of history than their children. They’re in it for ignorant ideology.

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Krieger argued that teaching American exceptionalism is the “standard, traditional, widely accepted approach."

…in the 50s, when women and brown people knew their place, and only old white males could be a President.

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Krieger is still hopeful that state schools boards will put enough pressure on the College Board for them to alter the new framework. He said he would ideally like the organization to return to the old course outline, for which his previous test prep materials and instructions were optimized.

So it’s all about the money and the amount of work he has to put in to keep his place on the gravy train. No wonder he’s a darling of the conservatives.

“Because of these changes, which never cease, however slow they may appear to observers who take a short view, every new generation must rewrite history in its own way; every new historian, not content with giving new answers to old questions, must revise the questions themselves; and—since historical thought is a river into which none can step twice—even a single historian, working at a single subject for a certain length of time, finds when he tries to reopen an old question that the question has changed.”
– R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History
https://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Collingwood/1946_2.html

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He works for the Heartland Institute, the same place at the forefront of global warming denialism. Maybe he should look into the lies peddled by his own institution. “Liberals don’t understand what American exceptionalism means”. No you patronising git! We understand perfectly that some Americans such as yourself are exceptionally stupid!

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A former teacher that now makes his living tutoring for the test, or as they used to lament “teaching to the exam”. Since he sells test prep books he makes money off the books sold. Since there were no revisions to the test people can buy old test prep books, and he makes no money off those sales. So like my old Biology prof he has to resort to shuffling chapters around or fixing spelling mistakes (the Bio prof would give a 5 pt grade boost if you could find a spelling or punctuation error).

I think he is more interested in lining his own pockets than helping American students learn their history.

But gotta ask, if those that don’t know history are doomed to repeat it what happens to the people that only know the revised history?

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“…we’re not united by ethnic differences, religious differences, we’re united by our core values…”

One of which is to tolerate ethnic and religious differences, yet still unite as Americans.

That concept is opposed by the conservative movement. Political correctness always was a projection by conservatives of one of their most cherished goals – the elimination or marginalization of anyone who doesn’t look, think, or act the way they want them to.

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Apparently he doesn’t understand a lot things…In Colorado, we have the school board in Jeffco, who got elected by saying one thing and doing another…folks don’t like that, and the parents that I know, do not want these fake christian/bigot/gop/wingers controlling the learning of their kids…

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So many of these zombies in our land. So many contorted arguments to preserve what once was and avoid what is coming.

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"People who call themselves liberals haven't really understood what ... American exceptionalism means, and why it is so extremely important that it be taught to our kids,"

“American exceptionalism” is just a slogan, much like “Manifest Destiny” or “Deutschland über alles” or “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” or “White Man’s Burden”, used to justify certain policy goals to those who don’t understand long-winded explanations.

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I won’t be mollified until U.S. history books teach our children that Jesus rode a dinosaur back and forth to home school every day.

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I am really struggling with the concept of “American exceptionalism”. Perhaps Mr. Krieger could amplify what things America shares with NO OTHER COUNTRY. The first country to throw off a foreign king and establish a republic? Ever read the story of William Tell and the Swiss Confederacy? Or of the Dutch revolt against the Spaniards? Even the bad stuff-slavery, the wiping out of natives and the internment of the Japanese in World War II were not unique to the US.

I am left with the one area of true exceptionalism-the refusal to use the metric system. But the system the US does is use isn’t American, but English, so what gives?

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Irony of ironies: The phrase “American exceptionalism” was coined (in Russian) by none other than Josef Stalin. It occurred during a dispute within the Communist International between the Soviets who claimed leadership in the movement and some American Communist theoreticians who sought to alter Marxist-Leninist analysis to account for the US’s seeming exception to the general processes of history as Marxism understood them. They tried to explain why we have never had a true mass left, unlike places like Germany, France, and Italy. (We still don’t.)

I doubt Mr. Krieger knows this, but it would be great fun to watch his reaction if and when he learns it.

What was I thinking? True-red “conservatives” have the ultimate defense against unpleasant realities: deny them. (Why am I reminded here of unrecovered alcoholics?)

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They want history taught in Reaganisms, such the nugget: “All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government,” which Soreloser McFail (R-MS) was just busted plagiarizing.

Never mind that the Federal Government created Mississippi in 1817, California in 1850 and 35 other states over the years.

I suppose the late Gipper could be forgiven for not having Wikipedia.

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"[Krieger] said he would ideally like the organization to return to the old course outline, for which his previous test prep materials and instructions were optimized. "

Qui bono.

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As you suggest, I don’t doubt that that is more history than Mr. Krieger wants to know.

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My first experience with American Exceptionalism came when I was a kid in the seventies, in the form of a furious backlash against learning the metric system. As a marker to be suspicious of what follows, the phrase ranks right up there with “As a Christian,”

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