Teaching about history and airbrushing - when not OK?

[West Bromwich Holme]

Sorry for clunky title.

This article suggests that important figures are getting erasure for being white males.

We've also seen how people want to erase history because of links to things like slavery, err, whitewashing may not be the preferred terms, so airbrushing out.

But how are kids supposed to learn if history is too sanitized?

Back in the day - late 1990s/early 2000s, so around 1999-2002, in my high school in England, we had textbooks that gave no-holds-barred realistic descriptions of things from primary sources.

I don't have a copy and can't find any on eBay otherwise I'd post a pic on imgur.

Haven't the politically correct movement gone too far with airbrushing in history and things like pulling down statues, for example Edward Colston because of links to slave trade?

Unfortunately, slavery is unliely to go away, it's just less prominent now than then, due to better information and human rights, depending on where you live.

You could argue ancient statues of emperors celebrate dictators, but equally, the other argument is, it's a sculptor's work, and a primary source, so shouldn't be destroyed.

What next, a period drama set in ancient times and no slaves in manacles, because it's "woke" to include this, even if it were historically true? Yes, I know films aren't always about historical accuracy, but it's a common thing in this sort of ancient times, or those sailors using slaves in manacles on ships etc.

I'm wondering if the old ways about teaching history, outside of specialist documentaries for enthusiasts, were better, and kids in the 1990s and 2000s like myself had it better in some ways or not.

Back then, racism was still as much of an issue as today, and so was political correctness, but cancel culture etc. probably wasn't as prominent in the early days of the Internet in the 2000s and historical dramas still had to comply to FCC/Ofcom etc. compliance guidelines, but we didn't have what we saw in the news during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Bristol.

Incidentally, I'm starting Barbarians on Netflix soon, a German drama from 2020 about the Roman Empire occupying Germany, well, what's now the Rhine and Danube area, and that's depicting things in a less filtered way, fairly dark for a history drama, at least what I've seen on the trailer. Don't know if you get it on Netflix US or Canadian versions, but it is on the UK version. Although it has been criticized for historical accuracy, it's taken artistic license to make it more exciting, so I'll accept that for what it is. But it's not Game of Thrones-like.

When do you think airbrushing from history is an example of things going too far?

For example, Havelock Road in West London, England was the subject of a controversy over its renaming; the comment at the end of the article is interesting.

[Big Bad Blue]

Teaching that white colonizers, capitalist oligarchs, political lackeys, etc., etc. from the past were exactly that; teaching about their racism, classism, misogyny, homophobia, crimes, scandals and all of it; is not "erasing" anything. It is rescuing and restoring actual history from the myths and fictions that mostly white nationalists have accreted around it to obscure the facts. Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them. Teach them history warts and all.

[The Sherpa Empire]

Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them.

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

[Niarj]

Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them.

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

Agreed. The need to make history fit within the confines of certain preconceived notions has caused for some parts of history to gain detail when favorable, and for other parts to be simplified or dumbed-down to fit within whatever the notions are at that given time. People are predisposed towards favoring narratives which fit in with the groups they identify with over objective truths/statements, and the culture at the moment leans towards changing things to fit within "politically-correct" terms, meaning that changes are taking place within the teachings of history which focus on simplifying situations to push those narratives of their parties forwards; this has always been a problem, though it does seem to be becoming more rampant with the currently oversocialized culture much of the world is faced with. At the end of the day, the truth has little power in the minds and hearts of the herd, and so trying to correct this system would not be a solution to the root problems, many of which are caused by political shifts that occurred due to shifts in politics during the 19th and 20th centuries that led to mass industrialization. Though the parts of history which are taught may vary in accuracy, they will never be perfect due to the biases and desire to make things fit within certain messages that the editor wishes to spread.

I realize that I mentioned a lot about history being taught, but this also goes for people generally speaking about history in conversation in the real world outside of classrooms or news articles.

[Vikanias]

Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them.

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

This is what I was going to say but 10x better, don’t bring race into everything. It changes a complex event into “this race good, this race bad” when history is more complex, it’s not black and white. And treating it so is foolish.

[Esternial]

Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them.

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

I think one of the problems there is that high school history class, from what I can recall, couldn't quite afford to be too nuanced. We had to go through the entirety of mankind's history on maybe two hours a week. If the teacher wanted nuance in one chapter of our history, they had to drop it elsewhere.

At university you can have a whole class about the Russian Bolshevik revolution. In high school it's maybe a chapter, if mentioned at all.

Then you also have the problem that high school (history) teachers probably vary along a large scale in quality. Some may not be formally trained, even (?). Being capable of not inserting your own bias in your teaching, especially when it comes to history where it's arguably the most likely, is hard.

[Kerwa]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

[Esternial]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

It's part of a basis of knowledge. Learning about history can become useful when e.g. you're later writing a book about ice zombies, incest and dragons loosely inspired by the War of the Roses. I'm sure other people can give more examples of where a passing knowledge of our past can be useful.

To me high school is less about the content of what is being taught and more in developing your brain and exposing your to a lot of different streams of knowledges and ways of thinking so you know what you might be good at and want to do later in life.

But I'm curious: what you consider "other pressing matters"?

[Ifreann]

Sorry for clunky title.

This article suggests that important figures are getting erasure for being white males.

An article by a racist in a tabloid rag suggests that there isn't enough focus on white men. Golly.

We've also seen how people want to erase history because of links to things like slavery, err, whitewashing may not be the preferred terms, so airbrushing out.

But how are kids supposed to learn if history is too sanitized?

Back in the day - late 1990s/early 2000s, so around 1999-2002, in my high school in England, we had textbooks that gave no-holds-barred realistic descriptions of things from primary sources.

From 1988 to 2003, the infamous Section 28 was in force in English schools. Do you really think you were getting the whole story under a system of explicit legal censorship?

[Page]

Learning history should be discomforting and a little depressing and appalling. History should never be sanitized. That said, if a student leaves the classroom thinking "Wow, people used to be such savages, I'm glad we're civilized people with a fair society", then you did it all wrong. One should always draw parallels to the present and one should recognize that our progeny will condemn us as savages for our ways.

IMO, the goal of teaching history should be to make our youth our generation's equivalent of those who opposed slavery in the 1500's, those who supported marriage equality in the 1960's. Discovering our patterns of injustice can radicalize our society and cut short the suffering of billions.

[Ifreann]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

It's part of a basis of knowledge. Learning about history can become useful when e.g. you're later writing a book about ice zombies, incest and dragons loosely inspired by the War of the Roses. I'm sure other people can give more examples of where a passing knowledge of our past can be useful.

To me high school is less about the content of what is being taught and more in developing your brain and exposing your to a lot of different streams of knowledges and ways of thinking so you know what you might be good at and want to do later in life.

But I'm curious: what you consider "other pressing matters"?

Gonna bet on maths and science.

[Countesia]

No group regardless of their political leaning, race, or religion wants the full truth of their history. Just the nice bits.

In reality, humans have done nasty shit to each other. Thats the truth we should be learning about.

[Vikanias]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

I can say the same with a bunch of other subjects, fuck art, fuck geology, fuck chemistry, and the list can go on. the regular person often won’t use it in their daily lives, so why teach it? Well you can learn professions from these things, a Geologits, a Chemist, and Artist, and a Historian. It’s important to learn some recreational things like history, while it isn’t as important as subjects like math and Language arts in the way that you think (I.e giving you the information needed in order for certain jobs that are mainstream) history is important in its own unique way. And that is teaching lessons of the past and to not repeat them, slavery is terrible, so we shouldn’t repeat it, the Holocaust was horrible, so we shouldn’t repeat it. If we ignore history we become ignorant of our past and hypocritical if we want to fix problems that are rooted in history. What’s going to stop a person from thinking “hm, labouring is kinda hard, well there is a bunch of people over there that could do my work for me for free.” is here going to go to google and immediately change his mind when he sees how slavery was bad. What’s going to stop someone from thinking another race is the cause of his nations problems and start a genocide on that race? Google? No. Some people are fucked up mentally and don’t see the line between right and wrong.

[Rusozak]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

How do we learn from the mistakes of the past if we aren't aware of them? I would argue historical illiteracy is a contributing factor to many of the problem we face now. To see how similar events played out in the past and use what did and didn't work then as a basis for decision making.

[Betoni]

I'm not really convinced that the quality of education with regards to history in the "West" has declined. The OP and the article in it fail to demonstrate this completely.

[West Bromwich Holme]

I'm not really convinced that the quality of education with regards to history in the "West" has declined. The OP and the article in it fail to demonstrate this completely.

Fair enough; it was a discussion on a topical issue.

[Pulsroth]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

Whatever we might think about specific figures from history, encouraging people to look into the past is absolutely the best way of making today's world better, simply because our ancestors can show us exactly how to and of course, how not to run a society. Every civilization worth its salt looked to their predecessors for guidance, and those who didn't simply never became influential.

If we just dropped mandatory teaching about history altogether, today's kids would go into adulthood far less aware of how they can improve the world for their descendants. And I don't simply say this just because I'm a museum curator, by the way.

[Adamede]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

Probably the dumbest take I’ve ever seen on this website and that’s saying something.

[Katganistan]

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

So you want illiterate morons who can't learn from the mistakes and the triumphs of the past.

Got it.

[Hispida]

Learning history should be discomforting and a little depressing and appalling. History should never be sanitized. That said, if a student leaves the classroom thinking "Wow, people used to be such savages, I'm glad we're civilized people with a fair society", then you did it all wrong. One should always draw parallels to the present and one should recognize that our progeny will condemn us as savages for our ways.

i'm planning to become a history teacher and this exactly how i want to teach history. i don't want to whitewash or play down what i teach; i plan on giving people the uncomfortable truth, like it or not.

[Major-Tom]

I went to some very traditional Catholic Schools in my upbringing, and in retrospect; I wish the curriculum had been less airbrushed and sanitized. It's good for kids to know that the world is dark sometimes; within reason of course.

Teaching history is a waste of time. There literally is no point to it whatsoever and therefore governments should stop wasting public resources on it. It literally serves no useful purpose.

If you want to learn about it fair enough: there are books, libraries and YouTube. But the idea government should direct its energy towards history and not other more pressing matters is a ludicrous notion.

Same with English literature.

We'll be the brightest in the world then, eh?

[Ifreann]

Every civilization worth its salt looked to their predecessors for guidance, and those who didn't simply never became influential.

Which were these civilisations that didn't try to learn from the past, as they understood it?

[Ayytaly]

At this point I'd rather homeschool my kids.

[Republic Of Ludwigsburg]

Today's students demand to know the whole truth about their nations and communities and everyone and everything involved in creating and sustaining them.

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

(you live on land stolen from the Mohawk by the French, then annexed by the USA with the natives forcefully relocated to land where they keep to themselves)

[Ayytaly]

No, they fucking don't.

People are demanding a different slant from in the past, but it's still definitely filtered and edited to fit the latest trendy narrative.

Some of the changes are good. For example, it's good that people are talking more openly about the racist abuses that continued in the American South after the Civil War.

Other changes are not good. There's been an increasing tendency to put everything in racial terms, even when that means oversimplifying. Instead of talking about French, English, Shawnee, Iroquois, etc, etc, it tends to get dumbed down to just "white people" and "Native Americans." I don't live on land that "white people" stole from "Native Americans." I live on land that the US stole from the French and the Mohawk. When you reduce it to racial terms, you lose a lot of the nuance of the different waves of colonization, and you deny the unique national identity of the Mohawk nation.

(you live on land stolen from the Mohawk by the French, then annexed by the USA with the natives forcefully relocated to land where they keep to themselves)

Part stolen, part defrauded, part protected by treaties only to be broken