American Students Lack Knowledge on the Topic of American Slavery

[SummerMadness]

What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery

A class of middle-schoolers in Charlotte, North Carolina, was asked to cite “four reasons why Africans made good slaves.” Nine third-grade teachers in suburban Atlanta assigned math word problems about slavery and beatings. A high school in the Los Angeles-area reenacted a slave ship—with students’ lying on the dark classroom floor, wrists taped, as staff play the role of slave ship captains. And for a lesson on Colonial America, fifth-graders at a school in northern New Jersey had to create posters advertising slave auctions.

School assignments on slavery routinely draw national headlines and scorn. Yet beyond the outraged parents and school-district apologies lies a complex and entrenched set of education challenges. A new report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project points to the widespread failure to accurately teach the hard, and nuanced, history of American slavery and enslaved people. Collectively, the report finds that slavery is mistaught, mischaracterized, sanitized, and sentimentalized—leaving students poorly educated, and contemporary issues of race and racism misunderstood.

Among 12th-graders, only 8 percent could identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War. Fewer than one-third (32 percent) correctly named the 13th Amendment as the formal end of U.S. slavery, with a slightly higher share (35 percent) choosing the Emancipation Proclamation. And fewer than half (46 percent) identified the “Middle Passage” as the transport of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America.

I can already see it: the irony of the people that believe topics like American slavery should be ignored and "left in the past," while simultaneously complaining about the "erasure" of history when it comes to removing Confederate monuments.

 

[Dave-W]

Well - we had Holocaust deniers starting to mouth off less than 50 years from the end of WW2. Can the slavery deniers be that far behind?

 

[Hammster]

What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery

I can already see it: the irony of the people that believe topics like American slavery should be ignored and "left in the past," while simultaneously complaining about the "erasure" of history when it comes to removing Confederate monuments.

I’m not surprised.

 

[jazzflower92]

What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery

I can already see it: the irony of the people that believe topics like American slavery should be ignored and "left in the past," while simultaneously complaining about the "erasure" of history when it comes to removing Confederate monuments.

You can use the statues to talk about slavery and the Civil War.

 

[com7fy8]

According to my education, slavery involved traders who were British, Portuguese and Muslim. In order to get their slaves, tribal villages were raided and people were killed and kidnapped, in order to take slaves.

But, the slave traders knew they could get killed if they did their own dirty work. So, they hired black tribal men to raid villages of other tribes. For each slave captured, the raiders would get paid one gun. And the black raiders would get killed, resulting in depletion of the male members of the tribes supplying the raiders.

But certain black tribal chiefs saw through that, and refused to get fooled into helping the slave traders.

So @SummerMadness is this correct? Did black tribes help the slave traders? Should this be included in education??

 

[HereIStand]

"School assignments on slavery routinely draw national headlines and scorn." Based on the examples, I can't imagine why.

"A new report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project points to the widespread failure to accurately teach the hard, and nuanced, history of American slavery and enslaved people." Wonder if the Southern Poverty Law Center will release a study on the nuanced history of the evangelicalism, or just keep labeling evangelical groups as hate groups.

 

[SummerMadness]

According to my education, slavery involved traders who were British, Portuguese and Muslim. In order to get their slaves, tribal villages were raided and people were killed and kidnapped, in order to take slaves.

But, the slave traders knew they could get killed if they did their own dirty work. So, they hired black tribal men to raid villages of other tribes. For each slave captured, the raiders would get paid one gun. And the black raiders would get killed, resulting in depletion of the male members of the tribes supplying the raiders.

But certain black tribal chiefs saw through that, and refused to get fooled into helping the slave traders.

So @SummerMadness is this correct? Did black tribes help the slave traders? Should this be included in education??

Is this the lesson where you attempt to emphasize the skin color of the African tribes that participated in the slave trade in order to push the idea that they were selling "their own people" as opposed to treating it like you would treat Europe (selling the people of another nation)? I've never heard anyone call, for example, the Hundred Years' War a conflict of people killing their own people.

Moreover, American slavery had a strong emphasis on skin color, which had significant effect on free blacks, some even being kidnapped and sold into slavery as written by Solomon Northup. But I assume you want to emphasize the skin color of slave traders because that would somehow remove the racism endemic to American chattel slavery and how it affected the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights Movement?

 

[GeorgeJ]

No surprise. It's about on par with everything else they're not learning these days.

 

[faroukfarouk]

... where you attempt to emphasize the skin color ...

Isn't this what practically all your posts do?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Is this the lesson where you attempt to emphasize the skin color of the African tribes that participated in the slave trade in order to push the idea that they were selling "their own people" as opposed to treating it like you would treat Europe (selling the people of another nation)? I've never heard anyone call, for example, the Hundred Years' War a conflict of people killing their own people.

Moreover, American slavery had a strong emphasis on skin color, which had significant effect on free blacks, some even being kidnapped and sold into slavery as written by Solomon Northup. But I assume you want to emphasize the skin color of slave traders because that would somehow remove the racism endemic to American chattel slavery and how it affected the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights Movement?

If we're going to try to "accurately teach the hard, and nuanced, history of American slavery and enslaved people," we might want to make sure to throw in the fact that Native American Indians would sometimes own Black slaves, too.

 

[com7fy8]

Is this the lesson where you attempt to emphasize the skin color of the African tribes that participated in the slave trade in order to push the idea that they were selling "their own people" as opposed to treating it like you would treat Europe (selling the people of another nation)? I've never heard anyone call, for example, the Hundred Years' War a conflict of people killing their own people.

First, I am asking you if my facts are correct, according to your historical information. I know I might have been fed something bogus. You might have, too, for all I know. I'm just curious if you also have been told that local tribal people helped slave traders, or is this bogus?

I am sure peoples elsewhere on the globe and in history have hurt and killed each other. But we're not talking about that, here.

In case my information is correct, that local tribal men helped slave traders > to me, this would show how people of any racial group are capable of cruelty and other evil. And so, the problem of slavery and discrimination is not a "white" problem, but a problem of sin which is also in people who suffer discrimination.

Ones suffering the racial discrimination can also be discriminators in other ways; Jesus might say, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone."

Possibly, local tribal men helped slave traders because they too were discriminators against those not of their own tribes.

So, color of skin, really, would have nothing to do with anything.

Because "all have sinned" > all have been born in sin, so we can hurt and hate others and welcome the opportunity to look down on somebody else. For all I know, you are looking down on me, and so you have no intention of communicating with me in a positive way.

We can go after the white bigots, but my experience is that blacks too need deep correction; this is what I think it all means. While certain blacks might not sin, by racial discrimination, they could be degrading themselves in some other way, including by beauty discrimination which can keep people from knowing how to love.

And a person's own ways discrimination can do him or her more harm than somebody else's. I personally can look down on others because they do not have my way of understanding the Bible; but this is conceited and keeps me from really knowing how to love. Others discriminate against me, but I am my own real problem, then.

 

[GeorgeJ]

If we're going to try to "accurately teach the hard, and nuanced, history of American slavery and enslaved people," we might want to make sure to throw in the fact that Native American Indians would sometimes own Black slaves, too.

....coupled with the fact that if it weren't for the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of white folks, slavery in the United States would not have ended with the Civil War.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

First, I am asking you if my facts are correct, according to your historical information. I know I might have been fed something bogus. You might have, too, for all I know. I'm just curious if you also have been told that local tribal people helped slave traders, or is this bogus?

I am sure peoples elsewhere on the globe and in history have hurt and killed each other. But we're not talking about that, here.

In case my information is correct, that local tribal men helped slave traders > to me, this would show how people of any racial group are capable of cruelty and other evil. And so, the problem of slavery and discrimination is not a "white" problem, but a problem of sin which is also in people who suffer discrimination.

Ones suffering the racial discrimination can also be discriminators in other ways; Jesus might say, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone."

Possibly, local tribal men helped slave traders because they too were discriminators against those not of their own tribes.

So, color of skin, really, would have nothing to do with anything.

Because "all have sinned" > all have been born in sin, so we can hurt and hate others and welcome the opportunity to look down on somebody else. For all I know, you are looking down on me, and so you have no intention of communicating with me in a positive way.

We can go after the white bigots, but my experience is that blacks too need deep correction; this is what I think it all means. While certain blacks might not sin, by racial discrimination, they could be degrading themselves in some other way, including by beauty discrimination which can keep people from knowing how to love.

And a person's own ways discrimination can do him or her more harm than somebody else's. I personally can look down on others because they do not have my way of understanding the Bible; but this is conceited and keeps me from really knowing how to love. Others discriminate against me, but I am my own real problem, then.

What I think is a problem, comfy, is that a lot of white people feel that just because they didn't have anything to do with the Slave Trade of the past, or that they aren't racist now, also somehow means they do not need to be proactive in contributing to a more 'democratic level of equality for everyone,' now. Of course, what would be best is if all Christians in the U.S. let go of all of their silent prejudices and actually acted like equality among ethnic groups is an important thing to recognize and make real.

As it is, I think African-American people have felt that white people just give lip service to all of this democracy stuff and don't really try to help re-engineer and correct the social inequalities caused by the behaviors of past Americans, such as from our grandfathers.

 

[SummerMadness]

In case my information is correct, that local tribal men helped slave traders > to me, this would show how people of any racial group are capable of cruelty and other evil. And so, the problem of slavery and discrimination is not a "white" problem, but a problem of sin which is also in people who suffer discrimination.

No one ever said slavery was a white problem. However, in the context of American history, chattel slavery has had a significant impact on American society, it's what shaped the Jim Crow South and its effects are still felt to this day.

Ones suffering the racial discrimination can also be discriminators in other ways; Jesus might say, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone."

Possibly, local tribal men helped slave traders because they too were discriminators against those not of their own tribes.

So, color of skin, really, would have nothing to do with anything.

That is not relevant to the practice of slavery in America and its subsequent effects after the Civil War.

We can go after the white bigots, but my experience is that blacks too need deep correction; this is what I think it all means. While certain blacks might not sin, by racial discrimination, they could be degrading themselves in some other way, including by beauty discrimination which can keep people from knowing how to love.

I have no idea how you have drifted off the topic, but the topic is how children in US schools are not knowledgeable about American slavery, some even saying the Civil War was over taxes (clearly mixing it up with the Revolutionary War).

And a person's own ways discrimination can do him or her more harm than somebody else's. I personally can look down on others because they do not have my way of understanding the Bible; but this is conceited and keeps me from really knowing how to love. Others discriminate against me, but I am my own real problem, then.

You are now completely in another world on this topic.

 

[SummerMadness]

If we're going to try to "accurately teach the hard, and nuanced, history of American slavery and enslaved people," we might want to make sure to throw in the fact that Native American Indians would sometimes own Black slaves, too.

Are you arguing that we should highlight enslaved people held by Native Americans, which was about 0.1% of the slave population? A far larger population escaped slavery to live among Native Americans. Additionally, you would have to tease out the number of people bought as slaves due to familial connection, something seen in with many freed blacks that owned slaves.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

....coupled with the fact that if it weren't for the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of white folks, slavery in the United States would not have ended with the Civil War.

That is a point to consider. However, it's NOT really as if all those Northern White guys all got together to fight the other White guys from the South simply because the guys in the North felt sorry for all those poor African slaves. No, most of those guys were told to fight the South by the government... Just like they were 'told' later to remove all those poor Native Americans from various states and slap them in Oklahoma territory.

Furthermore, we can see by the overall failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War, and afterwards, that the Civil War and enactment of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments didn't guarantee much of anything at all for Black people, whether in the North or the South.

If anything, if was more like, "Ok, folks. You're chains are off. Jump for joy, but just don't move into my neighborhood! And don't expect much financial or social assistance. But, good luck!"

 

[com7fy8]

What I think is a problem, comfy, is that a lot of white people feel that just because they didn't have anything to do with the Slave Trade of the past, or that they aren't racist also somehow means they do not need to be proactive in contributing to a more 'democratic level of equality for everyone' now.

Well, I might make more of an effort to be good to people of color, since ones of them have been treated badly. At times, though, I am not sure this is some sort of discrimination. I guess be the best with everyone!

@SummerMadness Thank you for being clear; I am just offering things which have come to me, about this.

I think the things you have presented show there is misinformation, but also I think there is a much deeper problem, of not knowing how to love other people. So, changing the information, alone, is not solving the problem. This is part of why I included some of my own experience . . . of needing to get real correction by God so I know how to love.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Are you arguing that we should highlight enslaved people held by Native Americans, which was about 0.1% of the slave population? A far larger population escaped slavery to live among Native Americans. Additionally, you would have to tease out the number of people bought as slaves due to familial connection, something seen in with many freed blacks that owned slaves.

Nope. I'm not arguing that. But as one educated in Social Studies, I would think that a more "nuanced" study of Slavery means one that is more detailed and comprehensive, not one that is slanted to one or another political goal or cause.

 

[Sarcoline]

I think that the phenomenon of kids not knowing about the role slavery played in starting the civil war is more about a decline in the quality of education in the US then anything else.

I was the graduating class of 2000. I remember specific age appropriate things about the civil war. My teachers would tell me about participating in the protests that took place for civil rights. My class was diverse and we were all treated equally. Civil rights history made a strong impression on me. I never needed to reenact what happened in slavery to solidify the reality that what happened was wrong. I considered myself lucky to learn something that would lead to creating a better world.

When I got to college, I learned about some of the more tragic things like how many people died on slave ships with a connection to the actual description so that you could imagine how much pain there was that only few survived. I don’t think this is age appropriate for children in younger grades and I still never re-enacted it.

Education is not the priority that it should be in general and this is the problem. With all our resources and access to books, very few people study anything. In reality, you don’t need school to learn about something like this. You can search for some books to study the subject yourself, but few people do this and choose to enjoy the bells and whistles of technology instead of using it to further their education.

Take someone like Isaac newton. How do you think Isaac newton would use the internet and resources we have? The world needs more people who seek higher education like him.

Finally, I don’t think this phenomenon has the potential to create a resurgence of racism or a backsliding because this generation is integrated in a way that has never existed. We experience diversity in the modern world in a historic way. There has never been such an integration of different cultures under a neutral authority in the history of the world. When I say authority, I am referring to the constitution. The constitution is neutral regarding race.

 

[GeorgeJ]

No, most of those guys were told to fight the South by the government...

So, by this logic, the sacrifice of thousands of U.S. soldiers in WWII freeing the continent of Europe from Nazi aggression wasn't really a "sacrifice" by those who were drafted (i.e. "told" to fight by the government)?