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I looked through your list. Every, single one of those you listed are taught in either US History or Government classes with the exception of Faulkner (American Lit class). A couple, Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore along with the first capital, are trivia which may or may not be mentioned. The capital one is more likely to be mentioned in Government talking about the Constitution. That's tied into the compromise that placed the Capital where it is.
Depending on the state, the Federalist Papers will be covered in Government as will Dred Scott, Brown v. Board as well as several other landmark cases. The MD High School Assessment has specific questions on it on those two cases as well as five others (Marbury v. Madison being another).
I rarely quote myself (I let others do it) but the above is high school.
I looked through your list. Every, single one of those you listed are taught in either US History or Government classes with the exception of Faulkner (American Lit class). A couple, Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore along with the first capital, are trivia which may or may not be mentioned. The capital one is more likely to be mentioned in Government talking about the Constitution. That's tied into the compromise that placed the Capital where it is.
Depending on the state, the Federalist Papers will be covered in Government as will Dred Scott, Brown v. Board as well as several other landmark cases. The MD High School Assessment has specific questions on it on those two cases as well as five others (Marbury v. Madison being another).
Well, I've been surprised by how many "educated" people don't know a good chunk of the things on that list. And these people have fared well academically and professionally.
My personal "pet peeve" among "pop history" is its treatment of the Great Depression of the Thirties. According to popular belief:
The stock market crash of 1929, fueled entirely by manipulative brokers immediately sent the nation into a tough of complete economic paralysis; we were all dancing the Charleston in the summer of 1929, and standing in line at soup kitchens a few weeks later. And the Depression itself is too often depicted as lasting only until the first "Hundred Days" of the New Deal turned things around overnight.
In fact, a few days before the crash, Henry Ford hosted a meeting of industrialists, politicians and other prominent figures in Dearborn, MI with the stated intent of abolishing the uncertainties of the business cycle; Hoover was no laissez-faire free marketer.
Once the market actually sold off, not much of the pain went beyond those actually caught up in the speculative foolishness. The rest of 1929, all of 1930, and most of 1931 were "normal" years on Main Street. Things didn't turn particularly bad until the Federal Reserve began tinkering and triggered a severe round of bank failures late in 1931.
And while large amounts of legislation were passed in early 1933, the economy remained stagnant for the most part, FDR and his circle of advisers tried imposing a rigid set of standards, but most of the entrepreneurial community stood pat, simply because the rules could arbitrarily be changed at any time. The first signs of an upturn began in 1935 -- simply because some activities could no longer be postponed -- but the Supreme Court's invalidation of that tinkering in the form of the National Recovery Act in early May was the real kicker.
And Roosevelt's biggest contribution during these years was probably that he provided a moderating factor against a series of ideologues at both extremes of the nation's polarization, Had FDR failed, democracy itself would have been in jeopardy, and within its greatest stronghold.
I could cite any number of documented sources proving my point, but I'll start with these;
David Stockman's The Great Deformation -- with particular emphasis on William H. Woodin, a political neophyte who held the post of Treasury Secretary for about two weeks, and who simply "stonewalled" all inquiries until Roosevelt's inauguration during the height of the March 1933 "crisis." (pp 156-158), which was no crisis at all, but set the stage for the debasing of the currency-- for which Roosevelt could be given "credit" by his partisans.
(Woodin was a rail rolling-stock manufacturer who hailed from my home town of Berwick, PA, BTW)
John O'Hara;'s Butterfield 8 -- a work of fiction, but an accurate portrayal of life in New York in the two years between the Crash of '29 and the real meltdown in 1931
David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear -- A volume of the Oxford History of the American People with a non-partisan depiction of the wide variations in the severity of the Depression, and the time lapses between political actions and their intended (or non-intended) outcomes.
And last, but not least, the narratives of George and Helen Papashvily
The Papashvilys were Russian immigrants who provided accounts of thir lives as Eastern European newcomerss in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Their stories often appeared in Junior high - level literature textbooks when I was growing up. The best-known is probably the short story "Yes, Your Honesty", a semi-humorous tale of a voung immigrant's first (and positive) encounter with American courts and justice. But the Papashvilys also supplied an account of life in Detroit at the time of the real meltdown two years after the Crash.
The Great Depression was real, but much of the story has been manipulated and embellished for political reasons. Most of the real hardship didn't start until two years after the Crash, and most of the real recovery didn't start until two years after the inception of the New Deal. Roosevelt deserves our appreciation for his ability to deflect the domestic threat posed by the power-obsessed populism of hiss time, and for recognizing the foreign threat of fascism, and successfully mobilizng American opinion against it, But as an economic leader, he left a great deal to be desired.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 01-21-2015 at 04:20 AM..
None of the above, i'm not the type that is obsessed about other peoples lives telling others what they should or shouldn't know.
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