Well if we're going to have multiple goals, then we will need to solve the tensions that arise. Strait-up rah-rah brainwashing will best accomplish #1, but it won't help as much with #3, which requires teaching kids how to be skeptical and curious.
How should history be taught in high school?
- Thread starter BradStevens
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I don't think we've ever really taught straight up rah rah since the 50s? 60s? Not sure.
Part of being a good citizen, though, is to be skeptical and curious, Goat. And you seem to be championing that as a good thing? Does that make you rah-rah?
I'm not championing anything. In my mind, all education is essentially programming. Brainwashing. Whatever you want to call it. There's a reason most people end up worshipping the same gods their parents did, and it's not because multiple generations thought about it objectively, and all came to the same theological conclusions.
So if we're going to put children through this ringer - and I do think we should, because we have to have some way of passing knowledge on from one generation to the next for society to ever progress anywhere - then I think we should step back and think objectively about what we want the fruits of our education to be, and design the curriculum to best achieve those fruits.
OK. But one of the goals you want is to make people into critical thinkers, right? It is for me.
If people want to label that "Westernized," I see no problem with it--so much the worse for things that are not so Westernized.
Well, yes, if I must actually take a position on any of this, I do think that making kids into critical thinkers is a worthy goal.
I think good citizens comes from family and other adults in their life (coaches, scout leaders, ministers, aunts/uncles, neighbors) far better than a teacher standing in a classroom explaining why ancient Greece is better than ancient China.
I think 2 comes from 3. Memorizing dates doesn't make one a better working. Learning how to see something and correlate it to something else, or how to improve it, really helps make people more marketable. No good employer would refuse someone who can find ways to make processes more efficient or produce a better product
To an extent, "listen to what you are told and follow it unerringly" makes worse employees.
I don't mind a class like a philosophy prof did one time. Instead of a discussion on God it can be culture. Come in one day and say, "western culture is superior, change my mind". The class spends the period countering. The next class, "you convinced me, western culture is inferior, change my mind". Allowing people to argue, thus see, both sides is great even if the really do accept one or the other.
Probable the ways one sees, military dominance, was explained in Guns, Germs, and Steel. But I am not convinced we are looking at the right data. Islam had a huge lead in its golden age. China is rapidly gaining in the modern age. And China made great inventions in their ancient days. I think cultures ebb and flow. To declare the West victors because we like the results from 1800 to present doesn't seem to take the long view. Let me add a question, if western culture is superior, why did Rome and Greece fall never to return in any effective manner sending the entire West into dark ages.
It's the most recent, and it's the one we're living in now.
Because they’re horrid. Getty Lee’s voice sounds like a priest being castrated.
That wasn't from a magnum condom, it was from the can of dip. Cope, not skoal long cut. Long cut is for pussies who wear condoms.
I love how you like to pretend you’re not a Dream Teamer. Copenhagen. That’s the dream team. I tried it twice and vomited like a dog. I have friends who played actual games with Copenhagen in. Insane! Did Indiana people walk around doing that stupid finger tap noise shit?
Where I grew up, that was almost a rite of passage.
Sickest I've ever been was 19 or 20 years old, 4th of july, drinking beer all day in the hot sun, no water, empty stomach, "sure I'll have a dip, thanks".
It’s weird. My neighborhood commubity it was definitely a rite of passage. But I went to a catholic school in a different part of town and no one dipped there. I would say at least a third of my hood buddies dipped well into their 30s or when they got married. I have a couple that if no wives are around still do
I’m glad that is one bad habit I couldn’t acquire….
Now these kids are all running around with that Zyn shit. Philip Morris doesn’t miss a beat
Is that another word for Camel no-filters?
My favorite uncle is in his 70s and still dips when my aunt isn't around. She raises hell about it along with his beer drinking. He'll tell her it's the fault of her nephews and to take it up with us. Then 20% of the time, he'll get the hiccups and barf. LOL
I can't believe my aunt still talks to us.
Sorry to be slow on the reply, Brad. Just back from a work trip and wanted to give this the thoughtful reply it deserves. My initial thought (as a Cali commie) is
What the hell? These fascists at Brad's high school are anti-progress? They think times were better when more than half the population couldn't vote. This is what happens when you get a bunch of these crazy Moms for Liberty blowhar...oh, wait...this is supposedly a woke class? Oops...my bad. 🤣
Okay, in all seriousness, the oppressor vs. the oppressed dynamics are a bit much for freshman year in high school. However, most of the high school kids I know these days are engaged in lots of topics that were college level when I was that age, so that's muted some for me. Still, it's a little hard for me to compare because public school kids in the People's Republic of California have already studied ancient civilizations and medieval history in addition to U.S. History in middle school, so I wouldn't be against my kid having a year of this approach to the topic:
I'm a big believer in teaching kids critical thinking early on and the teacher seems to be asking for kids to develop evidence based arguments rather than just recite names and dates that they are not likely to retain in much detail anyway. Per my dumb joke above, the teacher seems to be asking a variety of questions from a few different perspectives and suggests those are just some of the possible questions that will be asked. In classes where there is a lot of discussion that presses students to present their own arguments, I think it's good for parents to be really engaged in what kinds of conversations their student is having in the classroom (to give the student room to work out their thoughts on the topic...not to tell them what to think) as teachers sometimes struggle to get everyone in their classroom engaged in the conversation and a class can sometimes fall victim to what the focus group world sometimes calls "loud person syndrome" (and, sometimes, the loud person can be the teacher
). I'm sure I'm late to the discussion with a bunch of ideas that you all have already been over, but regardless I think your son can learn a ton in this class with the right support from his very smart and supportive parents. :>)I'd set the kid up with a Rivals account and have him join the Cooler. That will expose him to Kommies and Fascists and everything in between.
Great idea!
Brad, look into the Rivals "sidecar" account (sometimes mistakenly called a spouse account). Ties it to yours so you can view his activity and posts while blocking him from accessing yours.
I would think Dream Teamers would be loyal to Grizzly.
My friends growing up were all in on Copenhagen. But there was another one that was like for the newbies that wasn’t nearly as potent. I tried it a few times until I was shamed out of it. Better to do nothing. But it’s driving me crazy what it was called. Not grizzly. Not skoal.
You're not thinking of skoal bandits are you? Came in the can, but was little rectangular mesh pouches and mint flavored.
It might have been Kodiak like goat mentioned. I can’t remember. It was nothing like Copenhagen and yes was definitely in pouches
I’d go visit those guys in college and there’d be nasty ass spit cups everywhere. Full. Rug smelled like dip.
Okay my buddy texted me. It was called hawken. “For pussies” he added. @hookyIU1990
It's just straight up gross as hell. First time I ever did dip, it was stolen. Friends and I were walking through Wal-Mart, and that was back when you could grab your own tobacco products, and my dude had this system where he'd grab two cans, and then we'd go shopping, and he'd open one of them, then on the way out, he'd put the other one back. It was stupid as hell, but he got away with it.
Anyway, we left the building, and we dipped while we were walking through the parking lot. Behind the buildings, another buddy made us stop for a minute, "I dipped too much, hold up," and threw up all over the pavement for miles.
The second time I dipped probably wasn't for five or ten years after that. By that time, it was with a fellow adult, and it was simply a way to get tobacco in a non-smoking apartment while playing WOW. Still gross, though, and I stopped almost immediately.
Driving to an FFA softball game with older guys as a freshman. I'm stuffed in the back with 3 other guys, but because I get carsick, I had a window seat. Senior in front of me says we need to get rid of these spit cups before we get there. 3 open cups go out the front window at 70mph and somehow enter through the back window at 90mph.
I'm covered in it and there's no access to the facilities at the school we're playing, so the best I can do is wipe it off with an oil rag he kept in the trunk.
Yeah if you didn’t do it holy shit. Drinkin beers and yell I’ll try a dip is no joke
Unfortunately, for black Americans as they were gaining equal rights in the 70s, Nixon moved us off the gold standard and enslaved all of us to the State. Thankfully, Bitcoin doesn’t give a f#ck about the color of one’s skin. It offers liberation and freedom to all people on earth. F#cking make that a course and teach it to the youngins. You’re welcome.
OMG that mixture of beer foam and that one tiny piece of tobacco you didn't realize was stuck between your teeth is like swallowing straight bile.
I'm remembering now, there may have been a few other aborted attempts at picking up the habit. I've forgotten a lot of my 18-22 years.
Stop squawkin'
Chew Hawken
That came around a few years later and I was already doing cope.
Fing kill me. In high school my edibles buddy had a room in the basement that his mom never went down to. You could climb through a window and sneak in so if I was too fckd up to go home I’d crash there. Our friends would always up there to play video games hammered at the end of the night. He had a 10 gallon bucket he filled with spit. To this day the nastiest shit I’d ever heard until your story
I think the loose stuff is stronger. Kodiak made my lip numb. I think if I did it today, I'd probably get stoned.
Also don't know how I missed this the first time through, but that's a winner.
