If Black & Brown Children Are Old Enough To Experience Racism-White Children Are Old Enough To...

[kpete]

[ck4829]

1. K&R. "This makes me uncomfortable, I wish to opt-out of this", that is privilege 101

Black children, poor children; they don't get to opt-out of food deserts, the school-to-prison pipeline, being denied from jobs because their names are non-conforming, disparities in policing, the consequences of redlining, whitewashed history, etc.

[StarfishSaver]

4. IKR?

[Traildogbob]

2. Brilliant.

Great post.

[arlyellowdog]

3. The problem is NOT enough history is taught

History has been squeezed out by STEM, personal finance, need for more recess, on and on. Ok, maybe they are all essential, but what gets thrown out....history. I’m my super liberal, enlightened community, they have gone from 2 years of American History in middle school to 1 year. They were barely getting past WW II as it was. Brief overview of Civil Rights (but have to include all groups fighting for rights. There are 9 months to get kids to understand the people who lived in this land before the Europeans came, Revolution, Civil War, reconstruction, frontier, the American Indian, Industrial Revolution, immigration, poverty, Depression, Hoover, FDR, New Deal, WWII, (its May...time for state assessments) try to have the students understand Civil Rights for many groups. Tom Hank said he was horrified he wasn’t taught Black Wall Street. He should try to be a teacher.7

[oldsoftie]

7. The problem with history is every year there's more of it!

And since I left school, recess has almost always been on the cutting block. And we've gotten fatter kids to show for it.
Personal finance was never taught when I was in school and in today's world thats as important as just about anything else.
But think about it; look at how much MORE could be included in a history class than what would have been in one in just 4 yrs ago? Everything has to be condensed into bullet points and major items. There's only so much time & so much to learn

[wnylib]

13. That list sounds impressive to me.

The only history about Native Americans that I got was in a short grade school local history unit. In junior high, we had world history in 7th grade, American history in 8th grade, and civics in 9th grade. Repeat in high school - world history 10th grade, American history 11th grade, civics 12th grade.

Nothing about civil rights except abolitionists and the underground railroad. But it was the 1960s then, so we learned about civil rights from TV and newspapers.

My 11th grade American history teacher taught nothing all year. He just rambled on about his kids and his family, then handed out memorization assignments that he never followed up on.

I grew up in the post WWII years. Nothing about it was ever taught. It was in our books at the end and we never got to that section. I learned more about WWII from TV shows and movies than in school.

Most of my knowledge about history came from my own reading after graduation (fiction and non fiction), from anthropology courses in college, and from genealogy since my traceable ancestors lived through and were involved in several historical events.

[FakeNoose]

14. Yes! History/culture/civics studies need a thorough revamping in our schools

Teachers must be able to teach social studies without the fear of getting FIRED! That's what happens now in case you didn't know.

Because many current parents were never taught properly (I'm making a broad-strokes generalization here) they fail to understand what they missed out on. Many of today's parents grew up in a skewed-right environment and not enough of them were pulled out by a liberal college education. Now their kids are getting the same short-changed curriculum and parents are fighting for it, rather than against it.

It makes me sick to think about it, and I'm scared for the next generation.

[patphil]

5. Absolutely!

[secondwind]

6. K&R

[Dream Girl]

8. They don't see black children as "children".

They don’t see blacks as people. But this is beside the point, the whole “protect child from CRT” is just a way to weaponize anti blackness in their strategy of keeping Trump white savages amped up and voting.

[Dreampuff]

9. Love that sign and the comments here!

I went to school in the 1960s and 1970s and I'm not even going to go there about the history I was taught. Many things should have been outlawed before they even started and they should have never gone with textbooks that were written and promoted by the Confederate Daughters of America. Decades of students were misled.

[Left-face]

11. Some of us didn't have to learn it in school

I grew up witnessing it from the moment I was born to this day.
I was one of the cool kids before cool was cool. We were prohibited by my parents from catching an N word by the toe. The use of the word brought out the child abuser in my mother and her ever present maple switch tree.. Yup..she had a never before known species of tree in our backyard.

[Left-face]

10. Alternatively...

Old enough to pretend it's not real in the first place..especially if you're a republican where pretend world is the real world.

[Jilly_in_VA]

12. If my mother

who was born in 1918 and raised in southwest Missouri during segregation times, was smart enough to teach me not to make a difference in people because of color, then so are other parents NOW. And that's it.