How Racism Gets Taught and Misrepresented in Our Schools
Teaching It Forward
The not-so-subtle purpose of compulsory schooling is to ensure a populace subservient to the status quo which primarily serves the ruling class. What we call education is derived from a Prussian model designed to reward individuals based on how well they stay in line and do as they’re told through the process of grading. It’s no mystery that those who conform the most by repeating verbatim the state-controlled curriculum they’re force fed receive the highest marks and are thus given the greatest opportunities for societal advancement. By discouraging individual thought and creativity while instead placing a premium on conformity, the powers that be ensures obedience instead of dissent from the people most likely to rise up against it. By controlling what is taught and holding educators responsible for their student’s test results, the ultimate goal of mass indoctrination is all but assured.
It’s this sort of forced institutionalization that has not only enabled but encouraged the racism that has plagued this country since the inception of government-mandated schooling. And there is no greater evidence of this than a brief perusal of a couple of the mostly southern school textbooks that were used to teach bigotry to young minds in the 1950s and 1960s.
An entire generation of Baby Boomers learned Alabama history from a textbook called Know Alabama. In a chapter called Plantation Life, fourth graders learned how living on a plantation was “one of the happiest ways of life.” The 1957 edition encouraged students to imagine themselves on their CONTINUE READING: How Racism Gets Taught and Misrepresented in Our Schools | Dissident Voice
