Heeeeeey so I pretty much just decided to join your group on the fly after realizing that I had the book you had and that I somehow didn't have a reading group yet. Hope that's ok! I'm looking forward to an exciting time.
I don't know about everyone else but I sure learned a lot from this book. It's like in class, when we heard from the Green Collar book- I had just assumed that what I had been told about the future/past was true and until then there wasn't any legitimate evidence challenging it. Yeah! I feel totally enlightened!
SO, after reading so much criticism, how do you feel about our history textbooks? I realize that we're all probably in world history right now but some of the ideas were universal, like the one about never showing nudity or suffering in school texts. Nudity is a huge unnecessary taboo that I've addressed before, but I digress. Suffering, however, is censored I think not because it is mentally scarring, but because it scars our opinion about war. It's one thing to read about casualties and horrors that civilians faced. It's quite another to have visual verification of these things. We live in a country that has always glorified war, for better or for worse. Of course our history texts would be no exception- rather the epitomizing of the whole thing.
The author also brings up the point that the public should have a say in what they think their youth should be learning, as stated by one of the publishers. With this, I have to say I disagree a bit. We can't let the community censor information, or we prolong the ignorance that the community may or may not be aware of, right?
I knew there was censorship in my textbooks. But I never thought it would be this bad, especially all around the country. Actually, I think that I did.
I know it's not just America who has these problems. Many countries have their own individual problems with censorship. Lots of kids in Japan and China don't know that anyone ever landed on the moon. My dad pointed out that it was probably because America was the only one to put a base there, and they probably didn't want to teach kids something so exclusive. Speaking of which, the science program in the US (poorly funded as it is) has decided to stop manned missions to space, which disappointed many formidable scientists.
Also, I thought the racism thing really rang true- how minorities generally do a lot worse in history classes. It makes lots of sense why they lose interest when their people's inevitable contribution isn't addressed.
That thing about Columbus... augh. I mean, while reading that paragraph, I knew it was lies, which was the worst thing. They didn't even try to disguise it. And I'm sick and fucking tired of history books making it look like the non-religious are the enemy. "Oh, columbus was a humble, religious man we should admire" bullshit.
Overall the book has posed quite a few infuriating situations that seem beyond our grasp, but I know that to change them is within reach. Also like the green collar thing. It seems far off, but if we work together, that future is a riveting possibility. Yeah! In fact, just today I had a conversation with some guys online. The starting post was
"Most of you will die from the effects of climate change."
It was on an anonymous community where hundreds of people post every day, and I decided to take part in the discussion as well as read some of the responses.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the main emotions people had were "OK hooligan, go back to the looney bin." That response really offends me, anyway. I mean, it's not a question of possibility at this point. If people do not change, it will happen, and people do not seem to understand that at all. You can't just ignore that in favor of your saccharine delusion that as long as you get to live the way you want to, everything will be fine and dandy.
I promise I'm not getting too off-topic, but I'll bring it back home now.
The reason why we keep having these problems is because of our parent's laziness. That's right, it's not that the youth has all the power to change things- the generation who willingly and happily passed on all their problems to their children is largely at fault. Think about it- I've talked to a lot of people 40+, and they all have "accepted" that the world is the way it is and there's nothing that they can do to change it. They've stopped trying because they know that the prime of their life is over and they aren't responsible anymore, apparently. It's a huge pattern that I see everywhere, and it's really ridiculous because honestly, our only purpose in being born is to secure and invent the future as an optimal world for the next generation to live in.
I know that it's my responsibility as a youth, but a huge percentage of the population is these older people who are so closed-minded and delusional. Clearly, it's up to us to re-invent selflessness for the benefit of tomorrow.
haha tl;dr sorry
-Irene
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