Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Not that it matters since teachers get bogged down focusing on wars and Presidents

Report: Textbooks Ignore Union Contributions. (AFL-CIO Now Blog, 9/6/2011)

Excerpt:   AFT President Randi Weingarten said the report “explains why so few Americans know much about labor’s history and contributions.”

It paints a devastating picture of distortion and omission. Too often, labor’s role in U.S. history is misrepresented, downplayed, or ignored. The result is that most American students have little sense of how the labor movement changed the lives of Americans for the better. A vital piece of U.S. history is disappearing before our eyes
.  [Strikeouts added for effect.]

Here's the American History syllabus as it was once taught in Warren, Pennsylvania -- first to all 8th graders at Beaty Junior High School and then repeated when we were juniors at Warren Area High School.  Both times we barely made it into the 20th century.  Sadly, I suspect the curriculum hasn't changed all that much since the 1960s.


Labor history ignored?  Try social history, business history, technological developments.   If it didn't involve ballots or bullets, fuhgeddaboudit.

Wonder where we'd find Gompers and Lewis on a Q Factor scale today?

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