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mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
Thu Nov 4, 2021, 08:50 AM Nov 2021

There is a good chance that the parents of the current parents in Virginia protesting teaching ...

NotJFKJrHat Retweeted

There is a good chance that the parents of the current parents in Virginia protesting the teaching of the history of slavery and white supremacy in America grew up reading the textbook, VIRGINIA HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, GEOGRAPHY (1957).


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There is a good chance that the parents of the current parents in Virginia protesting teaching ... (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Nov 2021 OP
holy crap... n/t lapfog_1 Nov 2021 #1
That's horrific. Harker Nov 2021 #2
That was my textbook Dave in VA Nov 2021 #3
I need more coffee before I can even process that fecal matter. spicysista Nov 2021 #4
1956 - The strategy of "Massive Resistance" against desegregation LastDemocratInSC Nov 2021 #5
That's a seventh-grade history book. Here's more about it. mahatmakanejeeves Nov 2021 #6
Willing suspension of disbelief is fine in a movie theater... 3catwoman3 Nov 2021 #7

spicysista

(1,731 posts)
4. I need more coffee before I can even process that fecal matter.
Thu Nov 4, 2021, 09:04 AM
Nov 2021

I'm sure other states had similar "lessons", too.

LastDemocratInSC

(3,829 posts)
5. 1956 - The strategy of "Massive Resistance" against desegregation
Thu Nov 4, 2021, 09:21 AM
Nov 2021
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/massive-resistance/

Virginia closed public schools in 3 areas of the state as a test. Warren County, where I lived for many years, was one of those areas. The white community quickly built schools for their private use. The black students were bussed to schools in surrounding counties.

When the public schools eventually reopened the private white schools remained in operation. The young people attending the public schools were nearly 100% black. Over a period of a few years the white families noticed that the world had not ended with desegregation and the white students returned to the public schools. The private system collapsed soon thereafter and the facilities were sold to the public system.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/remembering-massive-resistance-black-students-who-integrated-a-va-high-school-are-honored-for-their-role-in-history/2019/02/15/3fa46cf6-316a-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html

It was a shameful experiment that caused harm to everyone in the affected communities.

mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
6. That's a seventh-grade history book. Here's more about it.
Thu Nov 4, 2021, 10:03 AM
Nov 2021

Last edited Thu Nov 4, 2021, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)

This is the textbook I had in the seventh grade.

Outlook • Perspective

The lies our textbooks told my generation of Virginians about slavery

State leaders went to great lengths to instill their gauzy version of the Lost Cause in young minds



The seventh-grade edition of the history textbook issued to Virginia pupils from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

By Bennett Minton
Bennett Minton, a policy analyst, blogger and grass-roots political organizer, was a Virginia resident until 2018. He lives in Portland, Ore.
July 31, 2020

A series of textbooks written for the fourth, seventh and 11th grades taught a generation of Virginians our state’s history. Chapter 29 of the seventh-grade edition, titled “How the Negroes Lived Under Slavery,” included these sentences: “A feeling of strong affection existed between masters and slaves in a majority of Virginia homes.” The masters “knew the best way to control their slaves was to win their confidence and affection.” Enslaved people “went visiting at night and sometimes owned guns and other weapons.” “It cannot be denied that some slaves were treated badly, but most were treated with kindness.” Color illustrations featured masters and slaves all dressed smartly, shaking hands amiably.

This was the education diet that Virginia’s leaders fed me in 1967, when my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Stall, issued me the first book in the series deep into the second decade of the civil rights movement. Today, Virginia’s symbols of the Lost Cause are falling. But banishing icons is the easy part. Statues aren’t history; they’re symbols. Removing a symbol requires only a shift in political power. A belief ingrained as “history” is harder to dislodge.

How hard becomes clearer when you understand the lengths to which Virginia’s White majority culture went to teach young pupils that enslaved people were contented servants of honorable planters — and why for all of my six decades we have been intermittently dismantling the myth that the Confederacy represented anything noble. That dismantling began with Reconstruction 155 years ago and still isn’t finished.

{snip}

By Bennett Minton
Bennett Minton, a policy analyst, blogger and grass-roots political organizer, was a Virginia resident until 2018. He lives in Portland, Ore.

3catwoman3

(25,439 posts)
7. Willing suspension of disbelief is fine in a movie theater...
Thu Nov 4, 2021, 01:53 PM
Nov 2021

...or when reading fiction. It has no place in teaching history.

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