I think we're in big trouble. Some parts of the US get a decent accounting of this civil war, other areas not so much. I hope that it is better these days, but there has been a concerted effort in the south to not truly present the horror of slavery to school students. If kids truly understand, then the plight of southern slave owners can be used to see how this could happen, similarly to how we study run of the mill Germans for how they could have supported Nazis. However, if they were never taught how bad it was, then history books such as the one we're discussing only serve to reinforce their prejudice.
I don't think our population has really any idea how Germans became nazis. We didn't even discuss the kinds of horrors that happened in and around the USSR or China or Cambodia. My gradeschool education of slavery was what I considered average, when it began, how it worked, the horrible nature of the shipping of slaves, abolitionists, slave riots/revolts, the underground railroad, key figures, and that's about it until the civil war.
And we watched Roots from beginning to end, there's a great scene in it where African tribesman OJ Simpson brags about his killing prowess or something.
Anyway, Civil War history taught a lot about the lead up...about new states being slave states or not. How the south ignored the ban on international slave trading. How the abolitionists kept growing in numbers. The civil war itself is barely given much consideration compared to all the other topics I just mentioned. I remember wondering why everyone stood in straight lines and fired at each other lol.
I guess you can describe it as incomplete. There's certainly a lot of misinformation about it that persisted.
The U.S. government has yet to do any such thing, though individual states and church entities have apologized for Native American residential schools. Knowledge of forced residency schools for native children is spotty. It certainly was not taught when I was in school.
Looks like you all have some good curriculum. I'd be interested in watching that movie you referenced. I wouldn't say that something like that isn't taught in any US schools. Twenty years ago you'd have needed to take a high school U.S. history or Advanced Placement test to see something along those lines, if that.
I'm not sure what you're referencing here. The "left" as it were is becoming culturally more dominant, so education will reflect that. The confederate pollution is not so neo. Perhaps I shouldn't have used that term. They've been at that for the last century, at least.[/QUOTE]