Teaching 'feel-good' history is just wrong

A Facebook friend recently wrote that writing history for pro-college grades is tough. You have to preserve where the country went right or wrong, but for him, the bottom line was presenting a history we could all be proud of, which he thinks will help U.S. "live and work together."

Teaching a selective history so students "feel good" about the country is just wrong. I'm for teaching all of history - the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For instance, I didn't learn about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre until last year and I should have - because if we ignore the injustices that we did to some of U.S. in the past and ignore the lingering aftereffects of those injustices, how can we plan a better future?

Yes, you want to address how students feel and prepare them to live and work together, but that's not done by teaching selective history. It's done by teaching civics - how government works and the notion of coming to consensus when there are conflicting points of view. That's how we can hopefully avoid the radical divisiveness we face today, not by teaching selective history.

I'm not saying we do this in first grade, but certainly by high school because two-thirds of our students don't go beyond high school. Unless we teach all of our history, good and bad, then students of red families will be taught the red point of view and of blue families the blue point of view and our politics will continue to be stuck forever.

Ed Spire

Morton Grove