Like any modern society, we depend on schools to help us navigate through life. Our education is paramount to our ability to reason, and we apply our knowledge to help us solve problems. However, a couple of months ago a stark realization hit me — in every country, even in the U.S., a certain level of propaganda exists within our curriculum.
What we’re taught in school doesn’t follow the strict limitations of history. Important information can be omitted or completely dropped in the name of maintaining a particular ideology about U.S. history.
Recently, I read “Women, Race and Class,” by Angela Davis. In this work, Davis details the abolitionist movement and how it was entwined with the women’s rights movement.
The author discusses all of the well-known figures involved in the abolitionist movement, including Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. What is often not mentioned is the divide between the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements.
For instance, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a former abolitionist, ended up not supporting the black man’s right to vote. In reference to extending the rights of African-Americans, Stanton stated, “I say no; I would not trust him with my rights; degraded, oppressed himself, he would be more despotic … than ever our Saxon rulers are.”
Unfortunately, that side of Stanton was never presented in our history books. Until I read several questionable quotes from Stanton, I had always upheld her as a pure and faithful fighter for human equality. Now, I am questioning many of the figures I was taught to idolize in my youth.
In January, an article ran in the Huffington Post about the Tennessee Tea Party and its campaign to “Show the Sunnier side of Slavery.” The main idea was to change history textbooks to describe the founding fathers as not inclined to slavery.
If you’ve read our Constitution, you know that is far from true.
The article also mentions how the Texas Board of Education has revised textbooks to teach the “positive side of slavery.”
If that wording doesn’t scramble your brain, I don’t know what will.
The blatant racist revisionism that is occurring in our education system is troubling. Slavery was a dark time in our history, and it should be taught as such.
We can’t live in a society that glorifies the victory of throwing tea into the harbor while obscuring the cruel period of slavery.
It makes me wonder what else has been changed in our history books and what other historical lies have been written.
The continual deceit of our students will lead to a dumber and more ignorant nation.
The promotion of false personas will only end in the deification of all-too-human figures.
Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant all owned slaves.
These men were far from perfect, and exalting them to false standards will minimize their true achievements and disrespect their memory.
Don’t let revisionism affect your knowledge of the world.
Read, learn and apply what you discover to your life.
In a time when our heads are obscured with falsities, it is your responsibility to learn the truth.
Michela Martinazzi is an art history junior at UF. Her column appears on Tuesdays. You can contact her opinions@alligator.org.
