History taught in schools is biased, incomplete and often false
How the Big Lie can become historically accepted fact in the future
When I was in high school in the late 50’s my favorite subject was history and it is still my favorite subject. I scored high in history due to an impressive memory capacity. I could recall all the Moghul emperors of India followed by all the British Viceroys. The text book used in my high school was World History by a forgotten British historian. All the high schools used the same text book that in a few chapters dispensed with centuries of India’s history before the Moghul and British empires and proceeded to highlight the impressive accomplishments of foreign rulers. History is written by the victors and conquerors.
50 years later I have access to a huge amount of historical knowledge from many sources which has revealed to me how little I really knew about the history of my country. Because I enjoy reading history I am aware of my ignorance of India’s history. That is not the case with most of my contemporaries. They continue to believe half truths and lies.
Biased and incomplete history is taught in the schools in the US. My children who went to California public schools in the mid to late 80’s did not imbibe any more truths about American history than I had about Indian history. The genocide of Native Americans and slavery which are the two defining traits of American history were quickly dispensed off. The horrors and cruelty visited on African Americans in the South after emancipation was dealt with superficially.
The planned and meticulously executed slaughter of Native Americans and the perpetration of slavery under Jim Crow were human rights violations similar to the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs or the slaughter of Bosnians by Serbians. There is no difference between the two except one of time. There was no UN or other human rights organizations to call out the genocide of Native Americans and no World Court to try anyone for crimes against humanity in the 19th century as was the case with Slobodan Milosevic former President of Yugoslavia in the 20th century. The definition of crimes against humanity did not change in those 100 years.
One can debate whether the damage caused by the Jim Crow south in holding down wages and wealth of today’s black citizens merit reparations but it is not acceptable to hide the facts about 150 years of state sanctioned oppresion of black citizens of the South. Theirs was not the casual discrimination we see today from the Karens of today but a political and economic system structured and legalized using democratic means and ruthlessly executed to continue slavery in other forms. The South never gave up slavery, it just built new rules to legalize it and successive Northern presidents and the Congress looked away to stay in power.
Today the Republican party is largely promoting the Big Lie about the election. How the 2020 election be treated in the history books used by the schools in 2050 depends on the state of our democracy at the time. If the right wing supremacists prevail and Trump is reelected in 2024, the Big Lie will become historical fact taught to our kids in the future.
