What is the purpose of history class?

Is it to weed out the “vocational” students from the “college prep” kids? Is it to keep you from being embarrassed in public, like what Jay Leno used to do?
Or is it to impart the wisdom necessary to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?

If it’s the first, we’re in a good spot. As Woodrow Wilson put it in 1906, “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class … to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” Over 115 years later, that’s pretty much what we have. [Source]

If it’s the second, we’re not doing so well. Case in point -- 56% of Americans think we shouldn’t teach Arabic numerals in school. (Those are the ones that go 0-9). [Source]

And if it’s option #3, we’re completely failing. George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [Source]

But repeating the past is *exactly* what we do. The best illustration of this is how we treat the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Consider this quote from Gerald Ford on page 512 of Texas' official history textbook:

“The lessons of the past in Vietnam have already been learned – learned by presidents, learned by Congress, learned by the American people – and we should have our focus on the future.”

What’s astonishing is

1. There’s no discussion of the context in which Ford said this, nor any countervailing opinion,
2. There’s no discussion about what the lessons actually are, and
3. Ford’s blithe dismissal of history is found … in a HISTORY book!

Let’s start with the context.

1.) The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon had fallen to the North on April 30, 1975.

2.) A few days earlier, Americans saw pictures of desperate South Vietnamese climbing onto rooftops, trying to escape the city on helicopters that could take them to U.S. Navy ships just off-shore. The USS Midway's flight deck was so crowded, the crew resorted to pushing helicopters over the side to make space. [Source]
3.) Ford said this on May 6, 1975, during a press conference in which he dismissed Congress’s idea of a study to establish those “lessons of Vietnam,” which he considered "divisive." His quote was in response to the question, "Don't you think that we can learn from the past?"
4.) Ford's comment was lampooned in political cartoons like this one by Doug Marlette. [Source]
Putting the past behind may have been politically expedient at the time, but by failing to remember the past, we doomed ourselves to repeat it, and that’s exactly what happened in 2021 as we left Afghanistan with a very public timeline for our departure. [Source]

But again, events overtook us, and again, the American public witnessed images of desperate people – those who were the most welcoming of the American presence – forced to flee their own country. [Source]

We ignore the lessons of history to our own peril. We could have learned from the past, but we didn’t do it then, and we’re not doing it now. It's far easier to teach the simple fact that Ford said those words than examine them in any detail.

But don’t worry – if history is any guide, there will probably be another chance in the future to learn the same thing ... again.

Great idea, but let's not risk it.

It is easier to teach students what to think than how to think. It's also much safer.

For example, Texas' U.S. history book for 11th graders introduces domino theory on page 501. The idea in 1954 was that -- without U.S. intervention -- South Vietnam would fall to Communism, followed by the rest of Southeast Asia, like a line of dominoes.
Twenty years later, that *is* how it turned out. Following North Vietnam's takeover of the South in April 1975, Laos' fragile coalition government collapsed and the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. The textbook concludes on page 511 that domino theory played out as predicted.
But is this the right conclusion? To draw a straight line from 1954 to 1975 ignores *everything* the U.S. did in the two decades in-between. Yes, Laos and Cambodia fell to Communism, but was that because we *didn't* intervene or *because we did*?

During the Vietnam War, the United States dropped more tons of explosives on Laos -- on a per capita basis -- than on *any* other country in history, DESPITE the fact they were a neutral party. Even now, "at the current rate of clearance, it would take another 100 years" to clear Laos of all the unexploded ordnance. [Source]

Would Laos' coalition government still have fallen if we had *not* done that? And what prevented Thailand from suffering the same fate?

Ah, but these questions are too dangerous to ask. Rather than risk students coming to an unpatriotic conclusion, the authors quickly provide the right answer and move on. After all, teachers have a lot to cover.

Thus, we teach students "what to think" rather than "how to think."
And as with all decisions, there are consequences for that choice.

History as a means to subvert introspection

The third thing to consider when reading a history textbook is how it makes you /feel/.

Because if it makes you feel nothing, that's probably the point.

The pictures of the Vietnam War era in Texas' official textbook for 11th graders are deliberately bland. There are pictures of the 1968 Democratic convention, several soldiers getting out of a UH-60, and one with some napalm smoke in the distance.
The most controversial picture in the chapter is of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the Jeffrey Miller moments after he was killed in the Kent State protests, but there's no caption explaining that students are looking at a corpse.

What you *won't* see is anything that makes you question whether we really are the good guys.

But if you want students to understand how Vietnam could divide the nation, then you're going to have to show them the pictures their grandparents saw in the newspapers and on television at the time.

Let them see Thích Quảng Đức in the middle of his self immolation.

Have them Google search "Vietnam nap-" and let it autocomplete. Let them debate whether Gen. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was justified. And show them the aftermath at My Lai. But no, that's not what Texas wants for its students. What Texas wants more than anything is for students to feel vaguely positive about their history, even if what it has in its history books isn't representative.

Even if what it has in its history books isn't actually the truth. As I've shown, those things are secondary.

So as you read a history textbook -- or the news, for that matter (since the news is realtime history) -- consider what you're being shown.

Is it really the truth?
Is it truly representative of a wider trend?
And what emotion was this story meant to invoke?

Because what you're looking at has been edited, selected, and published very deliberately.

Sources:

There is a warning tale in depicting decontextualized truth, and it's applicable to social media
https://medium.com/@ryantorres_/burning-monk-a-warning-tale-4574d396a200

Kim Phuc Phan Thi received her 12th and final burn treatment in 2022.

https://www.wionews.com/world/vietnam-wars-napalm-girl-receives-final-skin-treatment-50-years-after-iconic-image-493855

What happened before the execution matters, too.
https://www.thephoblographer.com/2017/02/01/on-this-date-in-1968-eddie-adams-shot-a-pulitzer-winning-photo/

It wasn't something new. It just happened to be photographed.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/my-lai-massacre

If you eat ...

And if you eat in a country with a massive budget deficit, thank the industry that gets $59 billion in government subsidies every year. [Source: "USDA livestock subsidies top $59 billion"]

Oversimplified to the point of falsity

My daughter is learning about the causes of World War I.
Unfortunately, she's learning lies.

For example, why did Italy betray its Triple Alliance partners and side with Britain and France? As this worksheet explains, "Italy's reasoning was that the Triple Alliance was a defensive alliance, but Germany and Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive." That's garbage. The reason Italy went with Britain and France is because of the territorial concessions it was promised in the 1915 Treaty of London. [Source]

The distinction may seem innocuous, but it's important for understanding the causes of World War II. During the peace conference, Woodrow Wilson's insistence on self-determination denied Italy those concessions; the broken promises fed Italy's sense of grievance. [Source]

Later, Mussolini seized on that and cast himself as the one who could make Italy great again, despite having "won" its most recent war. [Source]

Unfortunately, when it comes to the causes for WW1, even for college-level students there's a 10 minute version, and then there's a semester-long version. Given the time constraints of an 8th grade U.S. history class, teachers invariably have to go with the former. They just don't have time for a fuller explanation of the truth.

In that sense, history is like physics. You have to learn about the Bohr model of the atom (which is wrong) before you can learn about electron clouds. And you have to understand Newtonian physics (which is wrong) before you can understand Einstein's ideas about gravity warping time and space.

So while I would *love* for history classes to "just teach the facts," the reality is that there are simply too many, and in the rush to get through the material, we lie to students.

Is there anything we can do about that?
Well, maybe we should be honest about it at the beginning.

Imagine a teacher saying, "Most of what I'm going to teach you is true, but many things are oversimplifications that hide details that become important later. Some things might be true, but are isolated incidents that don't represent a bigger picture. Other things have been chosen so that you get a positive impression of our nation's history, while still more have been left out for the same reason."

Despite it being the truth, I imagine that person would get fired pretty quickly.

History is just as much what we "don't* teach

A while back my daughter watched the movie "Hidden Figures" in her social studies class. It's about three black women who worked as computers at NASA in the 1960s, a time when it was segregated by race.

These days she is learning about Woodrow Wilson, the role of the U.S. in World War I, and Wilson's Fourteen Points.

But what's interesting is what she /isn't/ learning about -- the connection between Woodrow Wilson and that segregated federal government that Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson worked in.

Because it was Woodrow Wilson who segregated it.

By the time Wilson took office in 1913, the federal government had been integrated for nearly 50 years. This enabled "African Americans to obtain federal jobs and work side by side with whites in government agencies. [But] Wilson promptly authorized members of his cabinet to reverse this long-standing policy of racial integration in the federal civil service." [Source]

Black employees were fired, moved to positions where they would not interact with the public, and "in 1914 [Wilson] instituted a policy requiring federal job seekers to attach photographs to their applications." As you can guess, this was to weed out black applicants.

In addition, Wilson appointed southern whites to positions traditionally reserved for black appointees. His administration used the Red Scare as an excuse to undermine black newspapers, organizations, and union leaders. And he segregated the navy, which had not previously been segregated, relegating African Americans to kitchen and boiler work. [Source]

My daughter's class is not learning any of that.
They're only learning about Wilson's role as a great leader.
And I'm convinced there's a reason why.

Something I've learned as an adult is that your priorities guide your decisions, and your decisions *reveal* your priorities. I think the same is true with history textbook content.

Everything that's in a history textbook reflects either a decision by the author or a priority for a school board member. Textbooks get selected based on how well their content matches a school board's priorities. So if you put in commentary next to the Second Amendment that mentions limitations on gun rights, it might get accepted in California, but it certainly won't pass muster in Texas. [Source]

Those kinds of content decisions, when taken together, provide interesting insights into what our *real* priorities are for our education system.

Do we want students who understand the injustices of the past, and can make critical evaluations of present day public policy?

Or do we simply want students to grow up thinking, as we were taught, that the United States has been an ever-progressing, exceptionally righteous nation -- one where our leaders can be trusted to make the right decision?

We can answer that however we want, but our *real* priorities are revealed by our decisions. And what we *decide* to omit from our history classes speaks louder than what comes out of our mouths.

The "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy

Texas senator Ted Cruz is facing calls to be banned from all Texas Sports, given the following evidence of a curse:

• Cruz was there when the Rockets lost to the Warriors in 2018.
• Cruz was there when Texas Tech lost in 2019 against the Cavaliers.
• Cruz was there when the Astros lost in October 2023 to the Rangers. Cruz also attended all five of the Astros' home game losses.
• Cruz was there was the Longhorns lost in the Sugar Bowl.

It's the classic "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy at work again. (This happened before that, so *this* must have caused *that.*)

But superstitions like this rely on selective memory. In response to accusations of a curse, Cruz responded, "For 7 years, Catherine [Cruz's daughter] & I have attended nearly EVERY Astros home playoff game."

"If they're going to blame me for our recent home losses, pls also credit us for TWO World Series Championships & SEVEN consecutive ALCS's—we were there cheering Stros on!" [Source]

Are our rights God-given?

There is an idea that our rights and freedoms are God-given, and human law can only recognize what is -- essentially -- natural law.

But I don't think God gives rights and freedoms in the way we understand them today. This is a key difference between Christianity and "Americanity."

Freedom in the Old Testament is associated with -- and diametrically opposed to -- slavery. I think the best illustration is in Jeremiah 34:17.

“Therefore this is what the Lord says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the Lord—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth." [Source]

Most of the Law was dedicated to how the Hebrews should function as a community -- a lot of emphasis on people's obligations to each other. There's very little emphasis anyone's freedoms.

In the New Testament, the notion of freedom to do whatever you want is recognized, but discouraged -- again, the emphasis is on the community.

"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love." -Galatians 5:13 [Source]

And the notion of rights in the New Testament is very different than our understanding of them in America today. In America, we have an inherent right to self-defense. In the Bible, the idea of defending your rights -- even your right to property -- is a secondary consideration. I look at 1 Corinthians 6:7.

"The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" [Source]

My conclusion is that -- like the way we perverted and institutionalized slavery in the past to mean something very different than was in the Bible -- so also we also apply the terms "rights" and "freedoms" in the present very differently from the way God applies them.

I agree that soldiers are tasked with protecting against external threats, and civilians against internal ones. Unfortunately, we've seen post-9/11 how fear can lead to a willing curtailment of freedoms for the sake of an imagined security, and in COVID-19 how people will forego their obligations to the community for the sake of their own perceived self-interest.

Some thoughts about Veterans Day

I am a veteran, but I am uncomfortable with the level of deference given to veterans.

This week, I attended my daughter’s school’s Veterans Day commemoration. During the activities, there was a reading of this poem by Charles M. Province:

“It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.
It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”
[Source]

I argue that it is improper to credit soldiers for these rights.

Was it really the soldier who gave us the right to vote? No. The right to vote was extended, state by state, to all [white] males through a series of state laws between 1820 and 1856. [Source]

The same with women -- there was not a single soldier who died to pass the 19th Amendment in 1920. To the extent that anyone deserves credit for the right to vote, it is indeed the politician.

Similarly, we should not credit soldiers for giving us the freedoms espoused in the First Amendment –religion, press, speech, and protest. Those rights were only enshrined in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified – eight years after the Treaty of Paris formalized our independence. [Source]

So it was not the soldier who secured those rights. Rather, it was the citizenry of the necessary three-fourths of the states at the time.

And to the extent that someone receives a fair trial, it is not because of a soldier. Rather, it is because we separated our judiciary from our legislative and executive branches. As Anthony Scalia identified, that’s a key element of the Constitution -- one that Enlightenment-era politicians developed as delegates of the Constitutional Convention.

Now, there is an argument that it was the soldier who secured the independence necessary to enable those rights, but that is not necessarily the case. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia enjoy similar rights despite not having risen up in rebellion. [Source]

And while we may talk about existential threats to the country, reality is less threatening than the rhetoric. So again, the credit for our rights simply cannot go to the soldier. It must go to someone else.

Yes, we soldiers who have served beneath the flag will have our coffins will be draped by it, but your ability to burn the flag is not because of us.

I would argue that you have your rights because you will not stand for anything less, because you will not suffer elected officials who abuse you, and because you control the money by which the government functions.

And so, to the extent that gratitude is deserved, It is *I* who should thank *you.*

Militarization of police

[Original]

After 9/11. While the Army was learning about counter-insurgency in Iraq (how to be police in a combat zone), police in the U.S. were becoming more like the military.

Equality vs. equity

There's equality, and then there's equity. Equity is having different rules for different people to match particular needs. Equality is having an equal number of pregnant men spaces.

Sometimes equality's the better choice. It's "fair." But sometimes fair's not the thing that makes sense. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of sense to recognize when and why equity is the better goal.

The differing levels of "real"

There are different levels of reality – how “real” something is. There’s what you read, there’s what you see or hear from people around you, and there’s what you experience personally.

For instance, there’s this one moment in Bad Boys II (2003) that I really like. Martin Lawrence’s character learns that his sister has been kidnapped by drug dealers, and it’s a quintessential Michael Bay moment – camera angled up, zoomed in, and panning across in a wide circle with a busy backgound. Will Smith looks super serious but doesn’t know what’s going on yet. Lawrence’s character just stares blankly ahead and explains, “This s*** just got real.”

The scene is so over the top that – out of context – it’s almost kind of funny (check out the youtube clip and tell me I’m wrong), but it illustrates the jump in reality perfectly. Up to that point in the movie it’s been all fun and games, but not anymore. Oh no. From that moment it’s personal; it’s *real.*

Sen. Corrie Booker just had one of those moments. He probably knew that Israel could be dangerous, but it was probably just stuff he’d read in the news. It was only when he had to take cover in a bomb shelter that the nature of life in Israel became *real.*

I’ve had moments like that, too. Afghanistan was like summer camp until my first rocket attack. Then the risks became more real.

Similarly, I thought the COVID19 pandemic was overblown until February 2020, when my workplace moved to teleworking (which was a “hard no” beforehand) and people from my office started getting sick. Up to that point, the danger was academic, like it was in the SARS and MERS epidemics. One of those things that happens to other people, but not something that might affect me personally.

What’s interesting is that – for every increasing level of reality -- you cannot be dissuaded from that understanding by someone with a lesser perception.

For example, I have an aunt who worked as a nurse with people who were injured in car accidents. She won’t drive on highways anymore. It doesn’t matter that – statistically -- highways are safer than other, bidirectional roadways; what matters is her assessment of risk based on what she’s seen in the people around her.

This is an important thing to understand when dealing with others -- how different levels of experience shape one’s perception and assessment of reality. A person who knows someone who’s had a problem with a vaccination will not listen to a person who simply knows the wider statistics.

Conversely, not even those who’ve seen Saving Private Ryan can truly understand the reality of what Normandy was like during the landings [Source]. The imagery might be accurate, but there’s no way you can – from the comfort of your own couch – understand the deafening noise or the inherent smells of a battlefied.

It’s true with many different things. A person who only reads about transgender issues from the news will have a hard time understanding a person who has a family member who’s transgender. For the former, the face of transgenderism might be Dylan Mulvaney or Lia Thomas – a person they feel it’s OK to ridicule. For me, it’s not some stranger, but that family member I’ve known all my life.

At best, we can only reach a point of empathy with those who understand reality differently. To quote South Park episode 1101 (and credit to Ryan Araki for showing that episode to me), “I get it now -- I don't get it. I've been trying to say that I understand how you feel, but, I'll never understand. I'll never really get how it feels.” [Source]

If we can get to that point, I think that’s both evidence of, and reason for, profound humility.

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger just passed away; he was 100 years old. [Source]

The first book I read after high school was Henry Kissinger's 1994 book "Diplomacy." [Amazon link]

From it I learned that states do not behave altruistically --- there is always an aspect of self-interest involved. The key to understanding global events, then, is understanding how countries perceive their self-interest.

I don't know how much of the past 25 years came at a surprise to Mr. Kissinger, but I have thought about that book every time every time I've been forced to rethink how I view the world.

On "indoctrination"

The question is not "were we ever indoctrinated?"
It's a matter of *what* we were socialized to value.

The same is true of the next generation. It's not "how do we prevent them from being indoctrinated?" It's what are socializing them to value?"

Because one way or another, we are teaching our children *something.*

Survivorship bias -- licking the beaters

"I did it, and I'm OK, so it must not be so bad."
Meanwhile, the 30 or so people who die from salmonella annually aren't here to argue with you. [Source]

Narcissism may be rational, but...

Completely rational on an individual level. However, the world consists of more than one individual, and he rest of us would like you to think more about that.

The original post has some excellent comments on what constitutes "rational."

Moral equivalence

There was a time when Republicans -- led by William F. Buckley, Jr. -- hated moral equivalence. For Buckley, it was a lifelong crusade.

"He believed that when elite institutions ceased upholding certain time-honored truths, failed to distinguish in the official voice between truth and faslehood, and no longer proclaimed one economic or political system or religion superior to others, the nation's moral fiber would decay...." [Source: A Man and his Presidents]

He used this analogy to illustrate his point. "A man who pushes an old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus should not be likened to a man who pushes an old lady into the way of an oncoming bus on the grounds that both men are pushing old ladies around." [Source: A Man and his Presidents]

That changed when Donald Trump appeared on the scene, and Republicans couldn't deal with the cognitive dissonance of supporting both religious morals and a thrice-married loudmouth who bragged about how he could sexually assault women and get away with it.
At that point, Republicans could be seen performing amazing mental gymnastics, such as comparing Trump's infidelity and divorces to Ronald Reagan's experience in getting divorced. [Source]

Moral equivalence, by necessity, is a surface-level judgment -- suitable for memes and innuendo -- but not for a real understanding of matters.

And as Jesus admonished the crowd in John 7:24, we should "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly." [John 7:24, NIV]

Yet moral equivalence seems to be de rigeur for the GOP these days.

Torch-wielding and hate-spewing neo-Nazis met at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. In "the president's remarks afterwards, when he described the crowd as including some "very fine people," [he] implied a moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-racist protesters." [Source]

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is no different.

Following multiple conspiracy charges against the former president related to the 2020 presidential election, Rubio responded with fake bitterness. "Apparently it is now a crime to make statements challenging election results if a prosecutor decides those statements aren’t true," he wrote. [Source]

Then came the moral equivalence. "So when should we expect indictments of the democrat (sic) politicians who falsely claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election?" As MSNBC columnist Steven Benen characterized the comparison,

"The truly amazing part of his missive was the senator trying to link together Trump’s election scandal and those who have the audacity to believe the Russia scandal. As Rubio characterized it, there’s an equivalence between the former president trying to overturn an election and seize illegitimate power, and those who 'falsely' accused the Kremlin of targeting the U.S. elections in 2016 to benefit the Republican ticket." [Source]

What's crazy about this is the fact that Rubio was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that concluded that "The Russian govemment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." [Source, page 3]

This is the sad state of American discourse. Those who once championed convictions about what is right have sold their souls, with no regard for what the one-time conscience of conservatism would have had to say.

His legacy puplication, the National Review, recognizes and laments this.

The possibility for an intellectual conservatism still exists, even if the social and political conditions that would enable such conservatism to reach a popular audience do not. This intellectual conservatism might adopt Buckley’s élan, his belief in the importance of ideas, his verbal dexterity, quick-wittedness, and talent for ridicule, as well as his loathing of moral equivalence, “policy misfits,” and “welfare populists” whose politics are cover for the further centralization of power.[Source]

Interpretation at the lowest understanding

Bertrand Russell explains why I can't relay messages from my wife. "She ... uh ... she said 'hi'."

Te Netflix phenomenon

I'm sad about Netflix shutting down, and the cover for the movie I recently got shows a reason why. This is what is lost -- a communal event centered around an activity. In its place we have the ability to stream movies, but the more limited availability of older movies is a disadvantage.

Thinking critically about distorted history

Florida recently made some changes to its Social Studies teaching standards, and politicians -- both Republicans and Democrats -- are criticizing them. I'm not surprised by the criticism from the left -- Florida is controlled by Republicans, and Ron Desantis is one of the leading contenders for the presidential nomination. But the criticism from fellow Republicans is interesting. [Tim Scott rebukes Ron Desantis]

The most salient points of criticism focus on two passages from the standards. [Source: Alachua Chronicle]

The first passage states that "slaves developed skills which, in come instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." [Source: Florida's State Academic Standards -- Social Studies, 2023. Page 6]. This kind of focus on the "silver lining" of slavery is in appropriate. You wouldn't tell someone who was sexually abused that "Oh, well you must be a stronger person now, right? I guess there's a silver lining to everything. Similarly, such a blithe apprachs has no place in a history class.

The second passage instructs teachers to teach about "acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre." [page 17]. Again, the focus is wrong -- the violence perpetrated "by" African Americans doesn't even belong in the same sentence. Doing so implies a "moral equivalence" that is simply out of place.

Ron Desantis has deflected criticism by pointing out that the standards were written by a committee of historians and teachers, but the viewpoint represented in them dimply doesn't represent the majority of the committee. [Source] As members of the committee pointed out, these teaching points were pushed by two members of the committee: Dr. William Allen and Dr. Frances Presley Rice.

In a statement, the two defended their point of view. "The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited. This is factual and well documented." [Source] The statement then goes on to list 16 examples.

However, there's a problem with these examples -- as this video clip points out, is that many of these examples are just plain false. And as Dr. Allen points out, when you knowingly repeat a falsehood, that makes it a lie.
I recently wrote about thinking critically. Let's apply that framework here.

First, some of what Florida is teaching is simply false. Second, even if there ever was someone who felt they "benefited from slavery," it was absolutely *not* the representative example. And third, it's clear why Florida Republicans are pushing this line of reasoning. It's because they want substitute patriotism for knowledge.

As Florida implements misleading videos featuring fantasy narratives into the classrooms , it's clear what their intent is. They want to replace the "woke" influence they imagine, (the law requiring such points of instruction were mandated in the Stop WOKE act), with their own form of indoctrination.