Propagating Propaganda To Perpetuate Privilege 0
The Roanoke Times explores how the Commonwealth of Virginia slanted textbooks to whitewash–you will pardon the expression–slavery. A snippet:
Springston’s story says: “Lawmakers thought that requiring schoolteachers to promote the Byrd organization’s view of history would set students straight and keep teachers from spreading socialist or communist ideas.” Ironically, that’s no different than what the Bolsheviks did when they instituted communism in the Soviet Union — they taught students a different version of history.
(snip)
On the website Politichicks, Eichelman writes: “One former commission member admitted to me that the goal of the seventh grade book was to ‘make every seventh-grader aspire to the colonnaded mansion; and if he can’t get there, make him happy in the cabin.’
These were the textbooks I had when I was in school. I realized by the time I graduated high school that they were–er–slanted (perhaps that’s why I chose to get my degree in history with a focus on U. S. Southern–as a rebellion against the attempt to indoctrinate me in bigotry).
