When my school was hit by a natural disaster, I had the opportunity to switch from a premier Catholic school to a premier public school for two semesters.

…let me tell, the biggest disservice that you received was a systematic lowering of academic standards. The difference was night and day. There is no way that that curriculum was preparing students for college.

Since there is a limited window in which brain plasticity is at its peak, catching up at university isn’t an option. Public school students are at a permanent disadvantage; it’s an equal opportunity problem.

The teaching of history in US public schools very specifically focuses on peaceful protest and little else.

They want to delegitimize the use of force and downplay state violence, which is why you probably weren’t required to read ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’ or taught about the Tulsa Massacre or the Battle of Blair Mountain. It’s why Malcolm X and Nat Turner are mostly ignored while all you hear about in your black history segments is MLK and Harriet Tubman. It’s why we’re taught about the euphemistically-named ‘Reservation’ system, when in fact, these were shitty, oppressive concentration camps for indigenous people and they were required to go there or be killed while their ancestral lands were stolen. (Which is not too dissimilar from what’s happening in Gaza right now with the support of both American ruling parties.)

In hindsight, it’s rather shocking to me that in my fifth grade class we were taught about conquistadors and no one batted an eye when I had dead bodies in my diorama about Francisco Pizarro. There’s probably no way that would fly today.

I’m still learning shit in my 40’s, reading history for my own enjoyment, that I should have been taught in school. Here’s another tidbit you probably never learned about: An executed slave named Mark whose body was used as a landmark after his execution, even by Paul Revere: https://www.paulreverehouse.org/mark-hung-in-chains-slavery-paul-reveres-midnight-ride/

Checks and balances in the federal government is my biggest disappointment. They aren’t working.

For me, it was that protesting was only ever discussed as peaceful, civil activity, as was a way of communicating demands outside of the voting cycle.

Unionization and workers rights were never discussed. I didn’t learn about unions as a concept until nearly graduation when my first job had so much required training about how dangerous they were, and of course I assumed they were full of it and did my own investigation.

Mine connected history with current events and heck I took a class called current affairs.

I realized as I got older how much of our history, the parts they have to acknowledge, are treated like they’re a singular moment in the past, resolved, and somehow could never resurface in a different form.

The push to frame the Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage movements as the “correct” form of how American citizens call out inequality is also sanitized to the point it becomes toothless. We’re given a version where people just gather, speak out, sometimes get beaten to a pulp/jailed/killed but so long as they remain non-violent, eventually society will feel bad and someone with the power to change things will do so.

There are times where large scale protests are beneficial because it rallies and shows the scale of opposition. Sometimes witnessing the violence of the oppressors against peaceful people shocks and horrifies. But we’re at a point where watching cops, ICE, and Proud Boys brutalize others is fetish porn for MAGAts, and mass gatherings for the sake of showing up but not networking and continuing the movement during the weeks in-between is futile. They have no reason to see us as a threat if all we do is show up for a few hours one weekend every six weeks and hold signs.

And to my fellow dissatisfied leftists, if your aversion to anything more direct is rooted in the idea that previous protests were successful because they stayed “peaceful” and took their lumps, you’re protesting the way the machine wants you to. Just enough liberty to feel like you’re standing up to oppression but not doing anything that actually challenges the oppressor.

Born around 2000 here: My high-school history class got to 1945 and that was the end.

I remember in high school social studies, civil rights essentially “concluded” with the death of civil rights leaders. I had a great teacher who tried to include queer rights until the lesson and I am so grateful to her for helping us understand that civil rights includes the the disabled community

The only thing I am glad my US Public School education gave me were a few history teachers who directly talked about politics, activism, and repeatedly getting arrested for protesting the School of the Americas.

The public school system was sort of ultimately designed to make good little obedient factory line workers. Not a surprise at all, they want you to think it’s a thing of the past and get complacent. How do you think we got where we are today?

The older you get, the more bullshit will be revealed

Not being taught about the Golden Age is another one.

Well it is.
They are called boomers now and blamed for everything despite of the things they did.

I think about this every god damn day