All the books were edited to almost look like 'People' magazine when I last looked. My kid's American history book was vastly different from mine, and not just from the time table, but the context and content.
Mine had the root causes, the events and accomplishnents of all social movements. The labor movement, women's, slavery, civil rights, natives, so much in it.
We were required to know all of the names of the presideents, information on the issues in the elections, the wars, incidents, state capitols, different branches of the government, the economic engines in the different states, just so much. Had to be able to explain it, geography, etc. was tested or else you didn't pass.
My kid's book removed most of that, and the center of the textbook had 8 full color pages on Marilyn Monroe. Her acting career, and not even rumors about her and JFK, etc. His class took one day a week to watch flims, not educational ones. They took up more pages with the music industry and films. This was more than just one public school doing this.
Is it any wonder the kids don't know how government works, their power to make things better, are geographically clueless, don't even know who is in charge of the state they live in?
I was told years ago by a friend whose family was all military, that the change in the cirriculum was due to the DOE established by Nixon, which we're seen as good for guaranteeing the rights of kids to get an education, and other good things.
But she said that the cirriculum changes to fluff were intentional, to eliminate what the GOP saw as controversial. It was to dumb the kids down from the hard facts that we were served up before, causing young people to use the Constitution and the laws as part of how they resisted the Vietnam War. It was disenfranchisement of the mind from the bottom up.
A few years back in meetings to stop a foreign corporation from doing a lot of damage, the young people in the high school who attended it, lsaid they were not competent to even ask quesstions or state an opinion.
That's a sad state of affairs, and something that the fast talking corporatists want to see happen. Those of us who were older, had plenty to say, and evidence. it was really an illegal, irrational and anti-environmental project, that was unneccessary and a rip off of tax monies.
It was pushed through with a cabal of paid consultants and a rough shod gang who thought they'd get a job and came to bully the citizens. Despite the wide spread and well informed opposition, it was a done deal by the time it was offered for public comment.
That was when I learned that 'free speech' is just considered to be 'venting' by the public. And it went on and degraded the entire area, which sank even further into a little bit of red state hell.
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