6 Things American Schools Teach You About History (That Are Total Bullsh*t)
American history as told by a product the American public education system.
The American education system is rather broken, regardless of where you are. As someone who bounced around several schools, I can say with some certainty that there really isn't much difference in the inner city schools compared to the county schools, save funding.
Instead, emphasis is placed on test scores and homework, instead of actual teaching. That's bad enough, but it really doesn't help when you have politicians and regional school boards deciding what kids learn and what they don't.
As a result, we're taught a lot of crap. In this article, we will explore what gets taught, then why it was terribly wrong.
6. The World Wars (Or Thank God We Were There To Save All Of Europe)
What I was taught:
Americans preferred not to get involved in the wars. Instead, we just sort of watched for a while. World War I started because someone shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Europe immediately jumped into a bunch of trenches, and shot at each other. The U.S. only got involved because of the sinking of the Lusitania, which had a few Americans on it. They then went to war so hard, that all of Europe was saved, and America was praised as heroes. Star-spangled banner everywhere now, bitches.
Then, in the thirties, Germany got a bit uppity. Uncle Sam, again, ignored it for the most part until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so they dusted off their old ass-kicking boots, and starting with D-day, stomped a mud-hole in every Axis ass from Europe to Asia.
The poor, useless French and English forces were so happy to have us, they gave us French fries and Americano coffee. The only other major player that students are taught made a difference were the Russians, with whom the U.S. had a rather tenuous relationship. Russia was decent on the battlefield, possibly as good as America, but still not to be trusted, thanked, or in any manner admired, because they were commies, dammit! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Also, Hitler may or may not have been of Jewish decent, but he was most assuredly evil.
The Truth:
Wow, a lot to unpack there. For any of you who are fiction writers, you may notice a sort of structure there that doesn't quite sound like history, but instead sounds like the plot of a story. This is not just what is written in our movies, tv shows, books, and comics, it's what's taught in our schools.
It's written to set up the next phase of U.S. history, the Cold War. We give credit to the U.S.S.R. so that they seem a credible threat after the incomparable evil of the Nazis. America treats history like Dragon Ball Z villains, each new one has to be more powerful and terrifying than the last.
What this education fails to take into account is that Germany wasn't exactly run by a competent leader, see the Dunkirk Evacuation, for example. The American story fails to educate it's students on the amazing RAF victory at the Battle of Britain. In fact, before sitting down to do research for this article, I'd never even heard of the Kokoda Track campaign, the battle of Madagascar, or the aforementioned Dunkirk Evacuation, to name just a very few. American schools focus so much more on just what our side did, with heavy emphasis on D-day, and the dropping of the bombs. It's truly a shame.
As for WWI, it's no stretch to say I learned more in a reading course from the book All Quiet on the Western Front, than I did in a history classroom. Despite being taught that the U.S. single-handedly saved the world, the truth is America's involvement probably just shortened the war, more than decide it. British led blockades of German supplies were doing the job, and that tactic was winning via war of attrition.
Basically, what the U.S. did here is take all the credit for the hard work of everyone else involved, and acted like Europe would have been absolutely boned without us. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!