History Class Lies... Conspiracies? Programming?

[genkisan]

The study of historiography exists to address the problem of the winner writing the history.
It is the study of the writing of history, especially that based on the critical examination of sources and the synthesis of chosen particulars from those sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods.

Claiming that we should not teach history at all is simply insane, imho.....perhaps it could be done with less bias and more comparative liturature, but not to teach it at all is just fucking ludicrous.

 

[Keyz]

I'm not saying History is ALL bullshit... Maybe i DID say it lol, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. What I mean is this.... don't teach me what you believe to be true, and tell me that it's true.

100 years from now, what will be posted about the War in Iraq, or the War Against Terrorism??? Will it really be the story of the things WE know about it, or what they WANT us to know about it?

It's absolutely a brainwashing; maybe not every word of every sentence, maybe not every sentence of every paragraph, or every paragraph of every chapter, or every chapter of every book. But some of it is extremely misleading. And when you preach it as truth, thats only misleading anymore. We learn it, then we teach our kids, then they teach their kids.... In the end it's like a big ass game of TELEPHONE.

How about the news??? When a national story (especially terrorism) breaks, depending on what channel you are watching your news on, you will get a different story. Government sponsored stations will report the things that the government wants you to believe.

How come public schools don't position childrens to be entrepreneurs. Thats what the US was built on right? But instead we teach, "learn this stuff that we say you need to know, to make it into college, to succeed in a major, to go work for a company, and make a billion dollar college dropout even richer, while he's in Hawaii sipping on Long Islands."

With my title, I wasn't implying that the subject of 'history' is a 'conspiracy'... I just wanted to hear about some conspiracies that some of you may have thought about, just to hear some that I may not have heard of.

If I said, "What caused the War in Iraq?", 100 people would say 100 different things. 100 years from now, one of those stories would be in a textbook and considered fact. What about the other 99? Were they un-true, or were they just forgotten because it didn't fit the structure of what they want history to be?

Lol, yeah it really wasn't the weed that made me think about this topic; the bud only intensified what I was already thinking about.

I'm definitely gonna check out that book!

 

[Keyz]

It is definitely programming and brainwashing.

But it is not all a lie... or all written from the viewpoint of the "winners".

What is important to notice is how we are taught one version of truth in K-12 education, and then a NEW version of the _truth_ when we enter higher education at colleges and universities.

For example, you learn of the hero Christopher Columbus as a child, but the truth of the torture and slavery behind his legacy when you _pay_ for knowledge at the university.

The media is an excellent tool to control what truths might leak to you outside of school. This is something new.

Before they just had newspaper and school houses. Now they got radio, internet, television, movies.

We're fucked.

Very much agreed! Going further into what you said about "pay for knowledge".... That almost sounds biased..... "Those of you rich enough to pay for this knowledge will recieve it, and those of a lower class will be forced to believe what we want them to..." Not saying thats true, but maybe..... That would work against the concept that equal resources are available to everyone.

By the way, nothing I'm saying am I saying from a position of FACT... more so, from the position of BELIEF.... Everything I say could be completely off the rocker, but it's still my opinion, and still deserves to be uncovered in-depth, whether truth or not.

 

[RudeDog]

The education system is there purely to grease the wheels of industry. When you sit exams, if you can repeat what you have been taught you get a good job. If you put your own slant on things, you are factory fodder. Mind you, manufacturing in factories in the UK is well fucked. You fail to repeat the tora these days you go and work in a call centre.

 

[TwoOhSix!]

Hey, I thought you hunted whales for scientific research purposes only!!

 

[Japanfreakier]

I've taken 4 University history courses, and spent probably near $1000 for the books. While history does love to embellish itself, saying that it's all bullshit is kind of missing the point of the class. Most of my time in class was spent debating the why; learning from man's success and failure. Also, the bulk history is not far from the truth. There are many variations of each story but a rational person can usually make sense of what likely occured.

A rational person wouldn't even try to make sense out of hearsay.

 

[Japanfreakier]

Wake up people, the bay of pigs will play out again and again until we come together and stop it. Karma, One Love

I think we can stop it by stop teaching history. Pretty hard to convince people to go fight another person unless they believe in a history.

 

[Japanfreakier]

The study of historiography exists to address the problem of the winner writing the history.
It is the study of the writing of history, especially that based on the critical examination of sources and the synthesis of chosen particulars from those sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods.

Claiming that we should not teach history at all is simply insane, imho.....perhaps it could be done with less bias and more comparative liturature, but not to teach it at all is just fucking ludicrous.

Like most people here I took a lot of history courses all the way through college, loved them. They have zero benefit in my life, unless of course we are talking history with people, but we may as well be talking who has the most strikes in a single season.

I completely understand why people think not teaching history is insane, because we've been taught that history is vital, our humanity almost, but ask yourself, how insane is it to waste all that time teaching kids something that really serves no use in their life? I mean people bitch because they don't have to use the trig they learned in Math class but when is the last time you've used history?

I say make history an elective to people in College, after they study things like morality and ethics. Teaching history to young minds is abuse.

 

[Japanfreakier]

Hey, I thought you hunted whales for scientific research purposes only!!

We do. Kethcup or Soy sauce, BBQ or fried.

 

[BrainSellz]

They dont call it history for no reason, when its "his'story" its whatever they want it to be.

 

[ibjamming]

That'd be the the Prefrontal cortex of your brain. It controls your paranoia. Maybe that joint was too good for it to control itself. Or maybe you need one more.

I've taken 4 University history courses, and spent probably near $1000 for the books. While history does love to embellish itself, saying that it's all bullshit is kind of missing the point of the class. Most of my time in class was spent debating the why; learning from man's success and failure. Also, the bulk history is not far from the truth. There are many variations of each story but a rational person can usually make sense of what likely occured.

Sometimes...and sometimes there is nothing left of the other side.

History ,Who's Story?The Winners?Theres only one Side to His Story

Exactly...history IS written by the winners...the official history. The ones who don't believe the official version are then labeled as crackpots...conspiracy theorists...

Hey I gota good book for you if you want to unlearn the bullshit that was put in to your head since 1st grade.

It is written by Howard Zinn, an American historian, professor, WW2 bomber pilot and civil rights activist. This man did so much but you will never read about him in a history book.

The book is call "People's History of the United States" and it is written from the point of view of all the people Americans have shit on over the years, the native americans, japanese, blacks etc..

its an excellent book and here you can even read it for free.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26935544/Howard-Zinn-Peoples-History-of-United-States

I would call Howard Zinn a true American Hero.

Please no...not that book. It's the black perspective...very biased. If you read that you must read a KKK version of history too.

It's HIGHLY inaccurate.

Chrisopher Columbus was an Italian that worked for the Spanish not the English, but yeah what is taught in schools and what actually happened are often not the same thing...if you really want to read a good history book look at "A people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn (hell any book by him is good) but that one especially, it doesn't hold back the truth and sugar coat things like many history books do

Nooooo...

Why are you so extreme in your declarations? Yeah, high school history and other classes are pretty simplistic. There's not enough time to teach every interpretation of every problem in every subject. So hopefully you'll continue your education at a school that teaches alternate histories and theories, these schools exist, there are many. Or you could continue your education on your own.

Either way, such grandiose claims of brainwashing and conspiracies don't serve anything. "There are many variations of each story but a rational person can usually make sense of what likely occured." Any reasonable person realizes this during their education. The fact that you need to smoke to realize it probably contributes to the extreme conspiratorial view.

Saying that history shouldn't be taught at all because there are many interpretations is like chopping of your legs because your toenails are too long.

So WHEN do you realize it? 1st grade? 6th? 12th? Not until college? That's a LOT of bullshit you "believed" for quite a long time.

I'm NOT saying it should be taught...I'm saying the "official version" shouldn't be taught...an HONEST version should.

It is definitely programming and brainwashing.

But it is not all a lie... or all written from the viewpoint of the "winners".

What is important to notice is how we are taught one version of truth in K-12 education, and then a NEW version of the _truth_ when we enter higher education at colleges and universities.

For example, you learn of the hero Christopher Columbus as a child, but the truth of the torture and slavery behind his legacy when you _pay_ for knowledge at the university.

The media is an excellent tool to control what truths might leak to you outside of school. This is something new.

Before they just had newspaper and school houses. Now they got radio, internet, television, movies.

We're fucked.

Wait until grad school...and you do your dissertation...THAT'S when you realize...WTF?

The study of historiography exists to address the problem of the winner writing the history.
It is the study of the writing of history, especially that based on the critical examination of sources and the synthesis of chosen particulars from those sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods.

Claiming that we should not teach history at all is simply insane, imho.....perhaps it could be done with less bias and more comparative liturature, but not to teach it at all is just fucking ludicrous.

And most of it is derived from hearsay. It's a VERY inexact science. Mostly bullshit if you ask me. I know the guidelines they go by... It's guesswork. When you're dealing with NO originals and you only have a few pieces of copies of copies...I don't put much faith in ANY of them.

Teach it...but make sure everyone knows it's just a guess...and allow us to see the different sides versions if available.

I'm not saying History is ALL bullshit... Maybe i DID say it lol, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. What I mean is this.... don't teach me what you believe to be true, and tell me that it's true.

100 years from now, what will be posted about the War in Iraq, or the War Against Terrorism??? Will it really be the story of the things WE know about it, or what they WANT us to know about it?

It's absolutely a brainwashing; maybe not every word of every sentence, maybe not every sentence of every paragraph, or every paragraph of every chapter, or every chapter of every book. But some of it is extremely misleading. And when you preach it as truth, thats only misleading anymore. We learn it, then we teach our kids, then they teach their kids.... In the end it's like a big ass game of TELEPHONE.

How about the news??? When a national story (especially terrorism) breaks, depending on what channel you are watching your news on, you will get a different story. Government sponsored stations will report the things that the government wants you to believe.

How come public schools don't position childrens to be entrepreneurs. Thats what the US was built on right? But instead we teach, "learn this stuff that we say you need to know, to make it into college, to succeed in a major, to go work for a company, and make a billion dollar college dropout even richer, while he's in Hawaii sipping on Long Islands."

With my title, I wasn't implying that the subject of 'history' is a 'conspiracy'... I just wanted to hear about some conspiracies that some of you may have thought about, just to hear some that I may not have heard of.

If I said, "What caused the War in Iraq?", 100 people would say 100 different things. 100 years from now, one of those stories would be in a textbook and considered fact. What about the other 99? Were they un-true, or were they just forgotten because it didn't fit the structure of what they want history to be?

Lol, yeah it really wasn't the weed that made me think about this topic; the bud only intensified what I was already thinking about.

I'm definitely gonna check out that book!

You got it!

I was in the middle east...I SAW history...and I SAW what "they" did to it...twisted it 180 degrees. That was a day I had my epiphany..."IT'S ALL FUCKING LIES"...they say what they have to say, what they want to say...not the truth. EVERYTHING is political.

Government and corporations are merged. More of it happened during the bailouts, the takeovers. Government "owns it", they're responsible for it...yet the fat cat's running it keep getting their big packages...WTF?

Wealthy businessmen are our politicians...WTF do you expect? Government is RUN by the wealthy corporation owners. They give the people they want in power the money and support to get elected...then they're paid back.

Sorry...where's my waiver card?

Very much agreed! Going further into what you said about "pay for knowledge".... That almost sounds biased..... "Those of you rich enough to pay for this knowledge will recieve it, and those of a lower class will be forced to believe what we want them to..." Not saying thats true, but maybe..... That would work against the concept that equal resources are available to everyone.

By the way, nothing I'm saying am I saying from a position of FACT... more so, from the position of BELIEF.... Everything I say could be completely off the rocker, but it's still my opinion, and still deserves to be uncovered in-depth, whether truth or not.

That's EXACTLY it...ya gotta pay to play.

It's not...believe me...you're just starting to be free from the matrix...

 

[TruthOrLie]

Grizzly bears and Salmon don't teach history...

...but then again they're going extinct.

 

[Molson]

I'm sensing a lot of pent up teenage rebel anger in this thread...

High schoolers and most college students are too dumb to comprehend anything other than what's currently taught in most high school curriculum's across the US. What's taught isn't wrong per say, it's just a very bland cookie cutter curriculum.

On the topic of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." Please do not read this book unless you already have a somewhat rudimentary understanding of history over the past few centuries. Otherwise you'll come away like half the people who read this book crying out "OMGz look what they did!"

Historians do a lot of interpretation. That's their job. They compile a list of primary sources and try to make some sense out of all of it. It makes me cringe when people say that they've been told "lies" or that "the truth" hasn't been taught to them. There is no absolute truth. You weren't there when that shit happened. Neither was the historian, or the author of that history book, etc. You merely have only read one person's account/perspective of the event. And everyone is bias. It's human nature.

Go read a colonist account of the Boston Massacre and then go read a British officer's account of the Boston Massacre, and then tell me what actually happened on that day. Who provoked it? Who shot first? Etc.

You'll find that both stories are highly conflicting... it's impossible to say what actually happened. All you have are two perspectives of one event. So to say that either one is flat out "wrong" is a bit misleading...

 

[Japanfreakier]

Historians do a lot of interpretation. That's their job.

No it isn't

 

[Japanfreakier]

Actually let me back up, that isn't their job but that's what most do and that's why history is bullshit.

 

[SuperSizeMe]

Revisionism FTW

Everybody LOVES a good bedtime story.

Another thing that always kinda fucked me up was when someone died, who happened to be the biggest prick going, suddenly becomes "He was a great guy"...wtf?

 

[cannabowl]

I like history...but I love the truth even more.

 

[RandyMarsh]

Teaching history to young minds is abuse.

No doubt. Cant say I ever saw the benefit to studying history until I went post-secondary. Actually, before then every history class I attended consisted of me either sleeping, or bullshitting my way through quizzes.

Curious sidenote: I always got bitchin marks in history, and I NEVER knew what I was talking about.

 

[YackeeDoodle]

I understand the OP and his thoughts. My solution to all education is to make it free and accessable to all. Put everything on the internet or DVD for all to learn and use for their own needs. We can then eliminate expensive schools and incompetent educators. DVD's or online videos can contain a wealth of learning in one hour that an entire semester in college could not convey.

This would solve many world problems...unnecessary taxation, politics, unfair unions, access to quality education for the poor. It goes on and on. It would only take a few months to create this and the accuracy could be contested online in forums in order to correct it.

What a wonderful world we have created, if only we would use it to advance our life instead of destroy it.

Kind of seems like a great opportunity for someone...dontcha think?

 

[Finepointcanon]

"Lies my Teacher Told Me" Read it