Insidious bullshit in teaching
So, if you asked me what the most insidious lie I was ever told was, there's one that easily wins out over all others: Lost Cause of the South nonse. Now, on it's own, it's bad, but not exactly "the most insidious lie". But here's the kicker: I was in 4th grade, and I was told this by a speaker who my social studies teacher brought in to tell us about how the civil war wasn't actually about slavery.
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Insidious bullshit in teaching
Let that sink in. Fourth grader. Told this during social studies. By an outside speaker. Like, this would have been bad enough if I was a senior in high school. But at least I would have had the ability to, if not call it out, do my research and find out how bullshit it is. To intellectually defend myself, as it were. As a fourth grader, though? No. Not in a million years could I have hoped to defend my young, impressionable mind.
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Insidious bullshit in teaching
Let this be a reminder that they get you young. If I hadn't taken the intellectual pathway I did, the first thing I would have found challenging that narrative would have been my Texas Government professor during my second semester of college. Even as it was, I was a junior or senior in high school before I really found out that narrative is bullshit. Children are the future, and it's children that fascists will target.
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