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For those of you who were recently in high school (or still are), how is the Vietnam war now being taught? What kinds of references are made to the reasons for the war?
Is there anyone here who went to school outside the USA, who can describe how that history is being taught in schools in other countries?
What I find particularly troublesome in that article is the suggestion that future textbooks will offer better coverage of the war, not out of any love for objectivity and historical scholarship, but because of increasing economic and societal ties with Southeast Asia, simply making the Vietnam war somehow more relevant than it was in the past.
I went to high school a mere 55 years after the overthrow and annexation of Hawaii and the genocide in the Philippines, but there was absolutely no reference in school to suggest anything except that they had forever been an American entitlement about which we behaved nobly. Now, it is 55 years after the start of the Vietnam war. Does it become all too easy to conveniently forget?
Here Here! Every college student has that pony-tailed granola eating professor that will teach the Lincoln and George Washington are the anti-Christ. I did. Now years later I can look at them as idiots. But impressionable students eat it up. History has a balance, you take the good with the bad - you don't overemphasize the bad or take it out of historical context. When you do - that's called revisionist history. I never understand American's pre-occupation with it's own guilt.
That being said, coverage of Vietnam has more to do with overall educational scope, or lack of it. We are graduating students that cannot even find Canada on the map, never mind give the complex history of the Vietnam war and it's geopolitical cold war context. Ask them about Lady GaGa however, and they can give you all the info you need.
Is there anyone here who went to school outside the USA, who can describe how that history is being taught in schools in other countries?
History in all countries is biased in some way. In the UK they do not teach the Viet Nam war as it was insignificant and not our war. We do not even teach about the war in Malaya which the Brits won then the Viet Nam war started after.
History has a balance, you take the good with the bad - you don't overemphasize the bad or take it out of historical context. When you do - that's called revisionist history.
It is? New to me. Revisionist history is historians viewing matters once further information comes to light after a historical event. Many events in WW2 had to be rewritten once classified papers came to light decades after and the whole Soviet archives were available. An example was in the 1970s when the British declassified the first electronic computer, Colossus, which decoded the German Enigma secret codes. The allies knew pretty much what the Germans were doing before they did it. The British informed the USSR of the German build up prior to the Battle of Kursk, etc.
It is? New to me. Revisionist history is historians viewing matters once further information comes to light after a historical event. Many events in WW2 had to be rewritten once classified papers came to light decades after and the whole Soviet archives were available. An example was in the 1970s when the British declassified the first electronic computer, Colossus, which decoded the German Enigma secret codes. The allies knew pretty much what the Germans were doing before they did it. The British informed the USSR of the German build up prior to the Battle of Kursk, etc.
You should know about revisionist history, aren't you quoted in a previous post saying that if it wasn't for almightly Brittania we would all be speaking German right now?
Heck if we only had one battalion of British Soldiers in Vietnam the whole thing would be done in a year and Ho Chi Minh city would instead be called Harold Wilson city.
Heck if we only had one battalion of British Soldiers in Vietnam the whole thing would be done in a year and Ho Chi Minh city would instead be called Harold Wilson city.
Harold Wilson city. Hmmmmmm....... that has a ring to it.
I'm not sure if public schools really cover the Vietnam War. My two kids have not mentioned it to me. History in our schools is mostly high level stuff, they don't get down in the weeds too much. My Son's have learned that someone who looks like them decimated the poor helpless Native Americans and that someone who looks like them also owned Slaves and to this day someone who looks like my Boys hates immigrants. They're learning the lessons well.
From a consensus of sources, it is certain that the Philippine civilian population was reduced by more than 10% during the three year period in which American occupation forces crushed the independence movement of the Philippine people. The rosiest minimum estimate is that 200,000 died from direct belligerent action, with only about 5% of those bearing arms. The rest died from disease and starvation under the neglect if not abuse by the American administration.
It has nothing to do with "white guilt" -- The USA today is barely majority white, and our foreign policy hasn't change a bit since 1900 in the Philipplines, not even under our Secret-Drone President, who does not appear to be white.
The football coach teaching HS History class part-time (because he has to) doesn't usually get all the way to the Viet Nam War.
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