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Comment by bigmattystyles | Hacker News Reader

You have a point but let's no pretend this is new - there's been so much whitewashing of American history for instance. The way the jim crowe is just sort of skipped; most textbooks go from the civil war to voting rights and even then, there's more emphasis on the better moments. This is just another set of people getting the power over curriculum. It's not great either but it isn't new.

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Anacdotal, but my History class in highschool covered the Jim Crow laws, and that was at a pretty rural public school. The books we were using were pretty old so I don't think it's that new.

I have to admit my statement was anecdotal as well. My whole view is colored by what I've read about textbooks in Texas and how they removed or toned down the role of slavery in the civil war. I concede that much of that reporting is biased)

How was math previously whitewashed? The last time government got interested in math curriculums was, you know, one of those 20th century "dear leaders" that loved his people to death.

You're conflating historical bias with a STEM field that is arguably as important as reading in modern civilization.

Oh, I'm not saying math was, I was responding to the parent comment which I interpreted as a comment on ~every~ (meant many) subject taught.

Ok, nevermind then lol.

This is very different from whitewashing. Every country whitewashes parts of its history, sometimes unwillingly.

This is an attempt to change the political landscape in the future through indoctrination. And it will not stop here.

I agree, though I would argue that whitewashing history is a subset curriculum design - I would argue though that whitewashing history is definitively an attempt to maintain the political landscape through indoctrination.

If the manipulation of the history is not big, the indoctrination will be almost non existent.

And let me tell you that I've been kind of indoctrinated by hardcore left wing history teachers. They wouldn't stop at teaching, they actively tried to make us think that the left was inherently good and the right bad. Sometimes it even backfired when they were exposed by someone who knew about the topic.

Hell, one of my teachers even whitewashed a terrorist group that was still active killing people back then.

This may be an extreme example but that doesn't change anything. Bad history teaching is not an excuse to bring more ideologies into school.

I'm pretty sure we agree - all I was saying is that it's not new.

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