Sex, Religion and Class

are all taboo in the world of school history textbooks.” So says James W. Loewen, a statement that, once I thought about it, made perfect sense. I went to a lecture for class today for Day of Presence here on campus called “The Most Important Period of U.S. History That You Never Heard Of, Why You Didn't, and What Difference It Makes." Where Loewen gave a two hour lecture mainly on his book Sundown Towns but also touched on his other book, Lies My Teacher Told Me. Both of which sounded fascinating and will soon be in my possession. In Lies he was struck by the complete idiocy that riddles today’s K-12 education system, especially when it comes to history. Students store useless history facts in a very tiny portion of their brain, vomit it back up onto multiple choice tests, get the grade and then erase these facts to make room for the next sections batch. I did it. You did it. We all did it, and now we’ve turned into Miss Teen USA South Carolina contestant muttering jarbled responses about saving the Africa and the Iraq with education when someone asks us why we think 1/5 of Americans cannot locate the U.S. on a map.
Like such as.
Idiot education system.
In Sundown he looks at towns across the U.S. that have historically (and many still do) have a policy where black people are not allowed in town after sunset. "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___." is an average sign posted outside of these towns (Oregon and Washington are home to a few). While these signs are no longer marking the beginning of towns, the sentiment is still there. Old habits die hard, some harder than others. Most of these towns were, surprisingly, located in the northern states although they are depicted in movies and popular culture as being a southern phenomena, one way for Americans to feel better about what's still an embarassing and too common institution.
This was one of those lectures that gets me excited and anxious to go out and fix the world and at the same time makes me so angry that, even though our text books lie about it, people hurt each other over and over and over. History repeats itself, America is no exception.
Thank you Loewen.