History is named for men too. “His” story. What about her story =Herstory? What about the working class, middle class, poor, Native Americans, Black, Latino/Latina and other people who I don’t consider minorities but the people who have written this “history,” have called these folks “minorities.” By the way I just can’t stand the term minority.

As a Native American womyn I would ALWAYS speak up when I read and discussed “history” in high school, college and grad school. I could not stand that these books were written saying such biased things about Native American people. I was also raised with a different thinking because of what the “white man,” did to this land. I always heard so much different stuff from my Father which when I share with people gives them a good laugh.

The way “history” was written is also very capitalistic and corporate. It does not share how the story is from other genders, races, sexes, religions, ect.

This women is awesome, by the way for teaching this way! :)

So, when we did a unit on biographies this year, I read my kids the (boring) books about George Washington we had in the book room, sure. But then I read them (awesome and beautiful) books about Marian Anderson and Dizzy Gillespie. They grabbed on to the idea that it wasn’t fair to tell someone they couldn’t do what they wanted just because of the color of their skin. They identified with Dizzy, whose dad beat him up and who got in trouble for breaking the rules (of school AND of jazz). The writing they did in response to those stories was amazing. They took that unit and made it their own.

And I sometimes answered their questions about history with, “It’s complicated.” I feel like so many teachers do their students such a disservice because they assume kids can’t understand complicated ideas. Obviously, as students get older, they can have a deeper understanding. But even little kids can be introduced to the idea that there aren’t always (or often) easy answers.

William, ok, I can just agree to disagree. Let me only just add that revolutions that have a role for anti-civilian violence are almost exclusively about deeply entrenched and malvolent governments.

Fair enough, god knows that the likelihood of either of us being completely right approaches nil. I still feel that targeted anti-civilian conflict, in any context, is anathema and ought to be considered a war crime. Take WWII. Germany and Japan were terrible, brutal, undeniably evil governments which committed atrocities that are hard to fathom. Someone had to put them down. That doesn’t change the fact that Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden (to name three off the top of my head) were pretty much unforgivable. It only gets worse when you’re dealing with people who are essentially unaccountable.

I’m nearly 30 and there are still parts of the history of my state (I’m a Texan), not to mention my country, that I still have to come to grips with and try and overcome my early indoctrination. That’s all school really is, after all, indoctrination. It’s been a lesson in three parts meeting people online from other parts of the country and the world. One of the good things about the internet is that it makes it harder to spoon feed the kool-aid to the next generation.

I think it would be fascinating the see Salazar’s lesson plans and how she had it all set up. I love history, but I would be stumped about how to start teaching it.