General Discussion

Certainly the last decades have seen a virtual explosion of advances. If you compare, for instance, the historiography of the American Civil War in the 1950s into the 60s, and that of today, the difference is quite remarkable. Even more so for Reconstruction and the post war decades in general.

I'm thinking more of how the general public relates to history, for instance, how American history is taught in our schools. Again, there certainly has been some progress--but also some backsliding.

I came across a YouTube channel a while back that illustrates what I'm talking about. It's by a young German woman now living in America, who posts about the differences she sees in the two cultures. One episode in particular: her look at how Germans talk about the Holocaust, Nazism, and the Second World War. She describes how as a child she and her classmates spent years going into these topics at some depth, how the acknowledgment of German crimes and German historic culpability were baked into, not only history classes, but classes in literature, art, ethics. She also mentions--and I found this telling--that Germans learn and generally seem to know much less about the various battles than Americans. German students are taught about German antiSemitism, and the camps, and racism as cultural realities, whereas Americans, if they know anything at all, generally focus on D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and such.

I'll post the link below, I think you'll find it interesting. As I watched it I thought of what a similar curriculum on racism would be like for American students. A multi-year, multi-disciplinary approach to learning about slavery and the slave trade, about institutional racism, about the genocide of Native Americans, about the continuing impact these have on contemporary Americans and American life.

Instead, we now have Texan children, according to recent reports, being taught that slavery wasn't so bad. And racist figures such as Nathan Bedford Forrest are being "rehabilitated"--not that they were ever really truly appraised. Vast swaths of the American public still see figures like Forrest and Robert E. Lee as heroes, and object to statues being taken down and streets and military bases being renamed. There are folks who still insist that the Confederate flag is worthy of public display. So clearly there's a disconnect between the progress made by historians--which I agree has been substantial--and the understanding of much of the general public. Think of all the advances made in meteorology and climate science, compared to the prevalence of climate change denial among the public. Or of medical science and virology and all the folks who think vaccines are the work of the devil.

And so the investment I meant to highlight was one made by our culture as a whole. History for many Americans is simply a listing of wars and battles, and a general reinforcement of American exceptionalism. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Thank you again for this discussion, and also for the article link.

Here's the link to the video--hope you enjoy: