So about that "Remember the Alamo" crap

[Cyrano]

Texas was part of Mexico. Mexico was against slavery. Those guys who defended the Alamo were defending slavery.

Texas won the follow up battle, became a state and joined the Confederacy in the Civil War. The whole Alamo thing was about slavery, cotton and money.

Our history classes and movies taught us so much bullshit that it's hard for misinformed people to know what's true/real and what isn't.

Today, Texas is on the leading edge of American fascism. They're trying to make sure that Democrat's votes don't matter. They're redistricting to ensure that a minority of white racists decide who gets to run Texas and who gets fucked.

Wake up America. Texas is showing us all what the American Fascist Party is all about.

[SheLiberal]

1. Spot On

Just read the book Forget the Alamo and it explains the entire slavery issue. Funny how we were never taught in school.

[Biophilic]

2. Funny how we were never taught soooo much in school.

And what we were taught is complete bunk and propaganda and mis-information. It truly makes my blood boil. I trust those teachers. I suspect some were just as taken in as I was, but I suspect some knew what they were teaching us was bunk or worse. The only reason I have any sympathy for them is because I almost became one of those teachers and I would have taught what I had been taught. Makes my stomach cramp thinking about that.

[Wounded Bear]

3. US history has been very largely whitewashed...nt

[Biophilic]

4. At the very least. nt

[ShazzieB]

10. American history has been WHITEwashed, all right.

In every sense of the word "white."

[broiles]

15. That's an excellent book. I especially enjoyed the discussion of how

how the myth has been used to support white supremacy in the subsequent decades.

[Retrograde]

17. I recommend the book, Forget the Alamo

It paints a not-so-favorable picture of some of the Texians who died at the Alamo, such as William Travis, a lawyer and land speculator who abandoned his wife an children in Alabama when he fled to Texas one step ahead of his creditors, and James Bowie, slave trader and shady land speculator who married into a prosperous Tejano family. It also talks about the fights on how to preserve the ex-mission as a memorial.

Two other books on the Alamo I've read recently that I liked are "Sleuthing the Alamo", by James E. Crisp, which talks about (and includes samples of) "Texas History Movies", which are actually comics a la Jack Chick that were distributed in Texas schools (and incredibly racist even for the 1930s-50s), and "Alamo All-Stars", a graphic book by Nathan ("No Relation&quot Hale that was the first book I came across that talked about the Tejano defenders of the Alamo.

[Xolodno]

5. Even in Russia they know Stalin was a mass murderer.

But they shrug and say he was the mass murderer they needed at the time.

Here in the USA, our history books gloss over or omit a lot of important details.

[albacore]

6. I gotta defend public education on this one...

I taught high school for 30 years, and always taught about the genocide (I used the word) of the Native Americans and US Imperialism generally. I taught about the Filipino "Insurrection", and the crushing of the labor movement with US troops and local "militias".
I taught about Vietnam as a clusterfuck and a war crime. (Having been a participant in the Southeast Asia War Games gave me some perspective.)
I taught about real slavery, and the civil rights movement and the women's movement.
I could go on, but you get the drift.
One problem with all that. Not enough time in the curriculum...in the year...in the day... to cover both regular history and government and the real stuff. About 75 hours in a semester. Sounds like a lot, but my Middle-East Peace Conference - role-playing - took 4 hours alone. The debate about dropping the bomb on Japan took about the same. The kids had the usual Pablum textbooks, and I spiced their reading up with Howard Zinn and some primary sources. This... before the Internet.
We need enough time in the schools to tell the WHOLE story. Not only critical race theory... we need time to teach critical HISTORY theory. And critical GOVERNMENT history. And critical everything.... The way things really ARE.

Some districts, like ours, had an academic freedom clause in the teachers' contracts, and "critical thinking skills" were in the guiding documents of the district.

Was it paradise..? Not hardly, but it was a district of well-educated, upper-middle-class folks who wanted the best.... even if there were warts.

The kids in the red states...Texas... and the inner cities.. and many other areas, don't get half of that. They get bullshit... regurgitated bullshit at that.

The Republican drive to kill public education is working. We have to turn it around.
Our real need for infrastructure is in education, and the Republicans are working as hard as they can against it.

[hunter]

8. I had but two K-12 history teachers who didn't teach the usual textbook U.S.A. pablum history.

One doesn't count because my family was not living in the U.S.A. at the time.

My own kids didn't suffer so much of that.

Their high school U.S.A. and World History Advanced Placement teacher was fierce. My kids were not among the lost when they experienced their first university history courses.

[paleotn]

9. Interesting that the flip in Republican views on post secondary education...

corresponds perfectly with the rise of Trumpism. Seems "librul academic elites" didn't really get traction until Donnie Covid, though Republicans have had that in the back of their minds since at least Reagan.

And thank you for your 30 years service teaching young minds how to think for themselves and to never be afraid of the truth.

[ancianita]

12. Good defense. The rise in Republican to kill education has been paid for by their owner donors.

We need to stop the donors as much, if not more than, their Republican tools. Charles Koch (endower of hundreds of universities) has been the driver of swinging higher education right.

The thing is, public education in each state, red or blue, is decided within that state alone, even if there are national corporate messaging campaigns undermining schools and every stakeholder in or near them.

Most Americans need to catch up to learning about the nation's public schools.

1. The feds do not fund any more than 10% of the nation's public schools. The feds cannot "command" anything about those schools except how that disability money is spent under its law called IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

2. Education is not a fundamental constitutionally protected right.
Americans can blame the founders for leaving education up to states to deal with.

3. Structurally, decisions about public schools have to be made 50 times, by 50 states, with 50 different populations.

4. Decisions about schools are only as good as the populations that engage in those decisions.

5. Corporations want the big piles of tax money going for schools, and so a corporate insurgency has been undermining the American institution of public schooling, state by state.

Some basic reading, and not a minute is wasted in doing it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shame_of_the_Nation

[keithbvadu2]

16. TX GOP opposed critical thinking skills in school.

TX GOP opposed critical thinking skills in school.

https://truthout.org/articles/texas-gop-declares-no-more-teaching-of-critical-thinking-skills-in-texas-public-schools/

Texas GOP Declares: “No More Teaching of ‘Critical Thinking Skills’ in Texas Public Schools“
-----
The company is moving across the Texas prairie, taking down traditional public schools like locusts consuming wheat fields. Keeping with the Republican platform, they promise to make obedience training and anti-intellectualism the cornerstone and foundation of education in Texas, to the detriment of students and society.

[hunter]

7. My pacifist abolitionist ancestors were not into that "Remember the Alamo" crap.

My wife's Native American and Mexican Irish Catholic ancestors, on both sides of the eventual U.S.A. / Mexico border, even less so.

Davy Crockett is dead.

Good.

[keithbvadu2]

14. not into that "Remember the Alamo"

Alamo? This guy better never drive to Texas.

[Retrograde]

18. Is Perl Horber a friend of Hugh Moran?

Is "rember" short for "re-ember"? Is an "alimo" a non-limo along the lines of an atheist being the opposite of a theist? Have they never heard of a spell checker, or don't they have any friends who can gently correct them?

Whoever owns this vehicle is from Oregon, which goes to show that there are redneck idiots in every state - as well as people who can't park!

[ashredux]

11. There are a LOT of Texans trying to turn it Blue...

Just saying….

[dflprincess]

13. I just read (ok listened to while out walking) a book "Forget the Alamo"

by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomilnson, and Jason Stanford. It was both entertaining and informative.

NPR article on it:
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1006907140/forget-the-alamo-texas-history-bryan-burrough

Remember the Alamo? According to Texas lore, it's the site in San Antonio where, in 1836, about 180 Texan rebels died defending the state during Texas' war for independence from Mexico.

The siege of the Alamo was memorably depicted in a Walt Disney series and in a 1960 movie starring John Wayne. But three writers, all Texans, say the common narrative of the Texas revolt overlooks the fact that it was waged in part to ensure slavery would be preserved.

"Slavery was the undeniable linchpin of all of this," author Bryan Burrough says. "It was the thing that the two sides had been arguing about and shooting about for going on 15 years. And yet it still surprises me that slavery went unexamined for so long."

In their new book, Forget the Alamo, Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge common misconceptions surrounding the conflict — including the notion that Davy Crockett was a martyr who fought to the death rather than surrender.

"Most academics now believe, based on Mexican accounts and contemporary accounts, that, in fact, [Crockett] did surrender and was executed," Burrough says.

"One of the reasons that it matters most is that Latinos are poised to become a majority in Texas, according to census data," he says. "So if there's ever been a time for there to be a robust civic conversation ... about this, about the place of the Alamo in our history, about Texas history itself, we hope it was now."

Much more at the link.

[keithbvadu2]

19. Abbot and the TX repubs do not want the true history of the Alamo taught.

Abbot and the TX repubs do not want the true history of the Alamo taught.

They pretty much stopped it.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=abbot+stop+alamo+history