I dunno, you didn't elaborate much on your oxymoron statement. - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 14/03/2010 04:30:40 PM
And if you reply to a call to do something with nothing more than "that's impossible", people generally get the idea that you're not very enthusiastic about even trying.
My main problem with OSC's article was the way he says that there's this suggestion about limiting American history in 11th grade to stuff that happened after 1877, and then rants about them omitting all those things before 1877. But I don't see anything anywhere about whether the things before 1877 are covered in other years, which rather undermines his whole point (for the sake of comparison, history classes where I'm from are spread chronologically over the six years of HS, starting with the prehistory and ancient civilizations in 7th grade and ending with the 20th century in 12th - so to me it seems quite normal to limit oneself to a certain time period in the history class of a given year).
I'm now looking to see if I can find any more details on this...
I'm rather unclear on why his comment is felt necessary though, since saying history should strive to be accurate is like saying science should strive to figure things out or clergy should seek to preach their faith. So essentially me say it's oxymoronic and him replying that we should strive for impartiality is sort of like my saying 'science doesn't know it all' and him saying 'that doesn't mean we should stop trying' or my saying 'no man can hope to know the mind of God' and him saying 'that doesn't mean we should all become atheists'. It just seems so out of place unless he assumed I was saying propaganda and distortion in history was fine which is why I queried and asked about the link, which happens to be a long rant by a centrist democrat about people flavoring kid's history books for political reasons. Mine is a cynical but true comment on history and on the NYT, which certainly knows about this and has chosen to highlight Texas when a lot of other states are doing the same thing under what I can only assume is the intentional equivalent of saying "The KKK is against gun control" an essentially transparent comment.
My main problem with OSC's article was the way he says that there's this suggestion about limiting American history in 11th grade to stuff that happened after 1877, and then rants about them omitting all those things before 1877. But I don't see anything anywhere about whether the things before 1877 are covered in other years, which rather undermines his whole point (for the sake of comparison, history classes where I'm from are spread chronologically over the six years of HS, starting with the prehistory and ancient civilizations in 7th grade and ending with the 20th century in 12th - so to me it seems quite normal to limit oneself to a certain time period in the history class of a given year).
I'm now looking to see if I can find any more details on this...