Public school american course on WW2

[Geiseric]

I was in class listening to my teacher's lecture about WW2, and he was talking about the politics. Said in bold on the board, ''Communism and Fascism are totalitarian police states.''
I facepalmed so hard, but didn't say anything. I talked to a friend later about it, he has a different teacher, and he said the exact same thing happened to him!

This alarmed me not only because it's incorrect, Communism doesn't necessarily constitute a totalitarian police state, but also because he didn't go over what communism/socialism is! So I was wondering, what does Revleft think?

[ed miliband]

Really? I don't believe anything like this would ever happen in a place of education.

[Nolan]

WW2? US and Britain did everything. They beat the nazis while France was cowering under occupation and the Soviets were being a mere nuisance to the Germans (if the USSR is mentioned at all). US made all the sacrifices and did the most to beat fascism. Even the UK was a Robin to the American Batman.

Communism and fascism are the same cuz they aren't liberalism. Liberalism is exceptional and anyone who isn't in our treehouse is a totalitarian extremist.

[piet11111]

I heard that ~70% of all men and material where deployed on the eastern front meaning the fight between the nazi's and the soviets.
the remaining 30% was europe and the pacific.

[Imposter Marxist]

"lol the usa had to save the red guize and the french cowards, and the biritsh weaklings, we went in there and kicked ass!" -Common US History teacher.

[gestalt]

Not at all surprising. It boils down to either what the curriculum and standards dictate in keeping with the prevailing trend of American ahistoricism or, as in a good portion of public schools, the social studies department is somehow the repository for the most reactionary teachers. One of my colleagues thinks showing Band of Brothers for two weeks adequately covers the period (whether in American or World History) and refuses to address anything about the home fronts.

The only thing truly disconcerting is this:


didn't say anything.

[Rusty Shackleford]

you challenge that shit hard.

400,000 US soldiers died fighting Fascism.

27,000,000 Soviet citizens and Soviet military personnel died fighting fascism.

EDIT: 27 MILLION not BILLION

thank you Nolan. 2nd laugh related to this post in 5 minutes!

[Nolan]

27,000,000,000

Damn.

[danyboy27]

at least they talked about fascism and communism in your history class.

these where where mentionned 2 times back then when i was in school 10 year ago.

Hoo well, it must have something to do with Quebec eternal hatred for things that dosnt happen in our backyard.

[HalPhilipWalker]

Fascism and Communism are both "unacceptable" political views in America, so I'm not really suprised your teacher knows little about either one. In my high school, there was a teacher who was a big WW2 buff so he at least could explain what Nazism was. He even taught a separate class on it.

[Proukunin]

This is what they did in every grade to us in Louisiana. A lot of the teachers were fucking neocons and warmongers. I didn't know much about communism when I was in highschool, but remembering back I know that they didnt teach us specifically on the subjects. Just saying we are 'free' and have democracy and communism is dictatorship and totalitarian rule.

[Rafiq]

Fascism and Communism are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. To group them together is complete bollocks.

The teacher tells you their are two types of economies and two types only. Capitalism: Private Tyranny. Communism: Public tyranny. THey never teach you about the systems that allow democratic control over the means of production. That is their biggest threat.

[Iraultzaile Ezkerreko]

Not at all surprising. It boils down to either what the curriculum and standards dictate in keeping with the prevailing trend of American ahistoricism or, as in a good portion of public schools, the social studies department is somehow the repository for the most reactionary teachers. One of my colleagues thinks showing Band of Brothers for two weeks adequately covers the period (whether in American or World History) and refuses to address anything about the home fronts.

The only thing truly disconcerting is this:

Agreed. You should have turned that classroom into a bloodbath. Also, why are you shocked?

[Dóchas]

What really bugs me is they way a lot of teachers bunch capitalism and democracy in the same boat and then have fascism and communism under totalitarianism/dictatorship. They dont seem to understand that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive systems, although they do overlap but the same can be said for left wing schools of thought. This whole "us and them" bullshit just takes away from a subject that should be taught with higher levels of sensitivity than other subjects

[Goatpie]

Last year we were taught that communism is the same as fascism. How communism was forced on countries and capitalism "implented" Constantly stating that this was the fail of communism.
That the US was the reason world war 2 was won because the USSR forced them into battles sometimes even without weapon's because" And i had to tell my teacher that it was lenin not stalin who led the revolution -_-

I also get tho whole Fidel,Che,Lenin,Mao and stalin are actually worse than hitler because atleast hitler was liked by most of his people while communist leaders somehow magically turned the country communist when no one wanted communism! Its shit. But my current history teacher (to bad hes only here for a year) Is a huge socialist :)

[Rusty Shackleford]

Damn.
:lol:

i just realized i typed 27 billion.

[Fulanito de Tal]

In Russia, WWII is called the Great War of the Homeland or Great Patriotic War. So many men were involved in the war that it changed the role of women in the family. They became more responsible. The amount of Russian men that died had such an impact, that the low ratio of men to women could be noticed by being there for a little.

[Pretty Flaco]

I think my history teacher this year did a nice job of explaining communism in an only slightly biased way. She's easier on the unions, social dems, and some of the socialists, but doesn't like ANY revolutionaries (especially the french) because she views them as being too hasty. I don't agree of course, but at least she didn't tell us that Fascism and Communism were one in the same.

[Klaatu]

"Soviets were being a mere nuisance to the Germans"

How much do you really know about WWII history?

The Soviets KICKED ASS

So much so that Winston Churchill, being deathly fearful of them, gave the famous "Iron Curtain" speech...
Even the U.S. was in awe of USSR might... And the Russians were way ahead of the West in rocket tech in the 1950s,
prompting the space race (which was really a gimmick to develop better nuclear missiles...)

[KC]

i was in class listening to my teacher's lecture about ww2, and he was talking about the politics. Said in bold on the board, ''communism and fascism are totalitarian police states.''
i facepalmed so hard, but didn't say anything. I talked to a friend later about it, he has a different teacher, and he said the exact same thing happened to him!

This alarmed me not only because it's incorrect, communism doesn't necessarily constitute a totalitarian police state, but also because he didn't go over what communism/socialism is! So i was wondering, what does revleft think?original thread good job

[Red Commissar]

"Soviets were being a mere nuisance to the Germans"

How much do you really know about WWII history?

The Soviets KICKED ASS

So much so that Winston Churchill, being deathly fearful of them, gave the famous "Iron Curtain" speech...
Even the U.S. was in awe of USSR might... And the Russians were way ahead of the West in rocket tech in the 1950s,
prompting the space race (which was really a gimmick to develop better nuclear missiles...)

I think you need to check your sarcasm detector. He was making fun of the history that many kids get in a classroom.

And OP, get used to that. They'll go on about dictatorships and totalitarianism running through Communism and Fascism, both being the biggest threats to FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY. All those clowns did bad things, America and the Free World only spread freedom. He'll stumble through definitions of socialism or communism anyways if you make them define it. Generally, unless the teacher is really open minded and aware of these things, they'll see Socialism as simply government regulation and welfare and Communism as government controlling everything that make crap.

[Die Neue Zeit]

WWII apparently is covered only in two paragraphs, if you look at certain history textbooks.

[tbasherizer]

Luckily for me, my history and comparative civilizations teacher was a communist. He taught us ancient history from a materialist perspective and made us analyze the Stalin/Trotsky power struggle and the Americans' bombing campaigns in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. He was also fun for out-of-class political discussions. He's the least reactionary guy I know IRL short of my anarchist friends and Party contacts. I'm from Canada though, so I guess it's part of our evil NDP communist indoctrination program;).

[A Revolutionary Tool]

You should have seen what happened in my class when we were going over WWII. We start talking about the lead up to WWII, the whole British people are pussies appeasing Hitler stuff when our teacher all of a sudden goes off on a rant. It went something like this:

"We have a similar situation today with Iran. Iran is building nuclear weapons because they want to attack our important ally Israel because they are a Jewish state. Since the government is controlled by the liberal Obama and his liberal companions in Congress he will try to appease Iran. But if we've learned anything from history it's that Iran's leader is just like Hitler. He'll smooth talk us into believing they won't attack Israel but they will. So we're heading towards a conflict and if Israel and U.S. interests want to be safe they will bomb Iran's nuclear plants and Iran's government buildings". :cursing:

Of course I got pissed and started to tell him off about how ridiculous he was being but then he ejected me from the class and I spent the rest of the class in the office. I hate our education system. Trust me it doesn't any better in Government and Econ, that will drive you insane too.

[KC]

If I had kids I'd definitely homeschool them.

Actually, I'd probably give them up for adoption. I hate kids.

[human strike]

In fairness, one can argue that Communism (uppercase 'C') did involve totalitarian police states, but communism (lowercase 'c') on the other hand...

Anyway, as a History student I know all too well how poor the teaching of the subject is at most levels, and I empathise.

[Dimentio]

We most learned about how horrible the Nazis were who gassed Jews, and how nice Sweden was which took Jewish refugees, and that we were lucky and almost "chosen" because we weren't in the Second World War. We also looked on a film about the Holocaust.

[Sir Comradical]

Dude I wish I was there in your class to make your teacher look like a fucking moron. You should be learning about the Soviet, Yugoslav, Albanian and Greek Partisans and of course the glorious Red Army.

[Dimentio]

You should have seen what happened in my class when we were going over WWII. We start talking about the lead up to WWII, the whole British people are pussies appeasing Hitler stuff when our teacher all of a sudden goes off on a rant. It went something like this:

"We have a similar situation today with Iran. Iran is building nuclear weapons because they want to attack our important ally Israel because they are a Jewish state. Since the government is controlled by the liberal Obama and his liberal companions in Congress he will try to appease Iran. But if we've learned anything from history it's that Iran's leader is just like Hitler. He'll smooth talk us into believing they won't attack Israel but they will. So we're heading towards a conflict and if Israel and U.S. interests want to be safe they will bomb Iran's nuclear plants and Iran's government buildings". :cursing:

Of course I got pissed and started to tell him off about how ridiculous he was being but then he ejected me from the class and I spent the rest of the class in the office. I hate our education system. Trust me it doesn't any better in Government and Econ, that will drive you insane too.

Could he do like that?

[Geiseric]

My only thing was, I hope he distinguished communism from Stalinism/leninism, since there are more branches as you all know. But I do understand that he's a new teacher, and han't gotten tenure yet, you know he could be fired if people start going around, Mr. Sanchez made me a Commy!

[Invader Zim]

The only thing truly disconcerting is this:

"but didn't say anything"

Hardly. It is deeply unfair to expect a student to overtly and explicity challenge the intellectual authority of a teacher who holds all the power in the relationship between teacher and pupil, especially in the American classroom environment which is, doubtless, hostile to the tenets of communism and those who uphold them.

[Metacomet]

To be fair, that isn't really how they teach you to teach. Unfortunately there is curriculum to follow if you want to keep your job. But history/civics teachers get a bit more leeway in the system, so it's possible not to teach that way.

I would probably teach it (i'm going into a teachers program) that it was a JOINT effort by many nations, each bringing something different, and important to the table. The UK wasn't going to defeat Hitler/Mussolini/Tojo by themselves, either was the U.S, or the USSR. It took all three (and all the smaller nations that never get mentioned, Canada, Australia, South Africa etc) to win.

Also important to teach is that Nazism/Fascism/Japanese militarism isn't a one shot deal, and it could potentially happen anywhere, and wasn't just a "comic book villain" type of thing.

I think Band of Brothers would be useful, but the book would be a better resource IMO. They were a pretty amazing group...........

[Invader Zim]

They were a pretty amazing group.

Were they? Was their experience 'unique'?

[Metacomet]

Were they? Was their experience 'unique'?


In some ways, yes, in many ways not really, But it is one that we have a very complete record of. That makes it an excellent resource.

[TwoSevensClash]

you challenge that shit hard.

400,000 US soldiers died fighting Fascism.

27,000,000 Soviet citizens and Soviet military personnel died fighting fascism.

EDIT: 27 MILLION not BILLION

thank you Nolan. 2nd laugh related to this post in 5 minutes!

I would like to add the 10,000,000 million Chinese who died. I couldn't find an exact figure so I posted the lowest estimate. The highest is 20,000,000

[gestalt]

Hardly. It is deeply unfair to expect a student to overtly and explicity challenge the intellectual authority of a teacher who holds all the power in the relationship between teacher and pupil, especially in the American classroom environment which is, doubtless, hostile to the tenets of communism and those who uphold them.

While it may be a projection of my own experiences, these were the moments I lived for while in school. He obviously had an opinion on the issue, why not take the opportunity? No one would expect him to yell out "That's a lie!" only to raise a counterpoint. A textbook definition of socialism and communism would be invaluable to the average American student.

Debate can be civil in these situations and not only do I expect it, I promote and I welcome it from students in my courses. From the outset I make sure students know that I am a facilitator to their learning not the source of knowledge or arbiter of truth. While most teachers do not approach education in the same way, it does not change the fundamental aspect of social studies in public school which should be fostering critical thinking skills. In the end it is not about a power struggle between the instructor and student, it is the benefit such an exchange would have for the rest of class.

[chegitz guevara]

I believe, by law, California teachers are required to teach that.

[Toppler]

In fairness, one can argue that Communism (uppercase 'C') did involve totalitarian police states, but communism (lowercase 'c') on the other hand...

In which way were the Eastern Bloc states "totalitarian" while the sadistic rightist dictatorships supported by the US were "just authoritarian", despite, except for Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il, commiting far less crimes and achieving a far better living standard for their population than the rightist despotisms?

The whole totalitarian/authoritarian terminology is just an ideological word play attempt by capitalist countries to connect fascism and nazism with communism, and to defend their pet thugocracies.

Otherwise, Trujillo's nightmarish police state http://friendlydictators.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html


"Trujillo had a penchant for self-adulation, naming the country's capital "Ciudad Trujillo" and likening himself to Jesus Christ. He also put his personal stamp on everything. On village water pumps: "Trujillo alone gives us water to drink." On a home for the aged: "Trujillo is the only one who gives us shelter."
Trujillo won the 1930 presidential election with more votes than there were registered voters, but as long as he was anti-communist, Washington was happy, so he invoked anti-communism to justify mass deportations, torture and summary execution. Workers who asked for wage increases were labelled "communists" and shot on the spot, as were farmers who tried to stop Trujillo from confiscating their land. He eventually controlled over 80% of the country's sugar plantations, using slave labor provided by neighboring Haiti to keep profits high, but in 1937 he decided to blame depressed sugar prices on the Haitian workers and massacred 20,000 of them. Trujillo was finally assassinated by the CIA in 1961, after he attempted to have President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela murdered because of his criticism of Trujillo's brutal regime. It was only then that the Marine Corps made public the fact that our "ally" Trujillo was a convicted rapist!

wouldn't be called just an "authoritarian" (considering he fully fits the definition of totalitarianism, especially his personality cult that he was forcing on his population).

And the GDR and Kadar era Hungary;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221064/Oppressive-grey-No-growing-communism-happiest-time-life.html


When communism in Hungary ended in 1989, I was not only surprised, but saddened, as were many others. Yes, there were people marching against the government, but the majority of ordinary people - me and my family included - did not take part in the protests.
Our voice - the voice of those whose lives were improved by communism - is seldom heard when it comes to discussions of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.
Instead, the accounts we hear in the West are nearly always from the perspectives of wealthy emigrés or anti-communist dissidents with an axe to grind.
Communism in Hungary had its downside. While trips to other socialist countries were unrestricted, travel to the West was problematic and allowed only every second year. Few Hungarians (myself included) enjoyed the compulsory Russian lessons.
There were petty restrictions and needless layers of bureaucracy and freedom to criticise the government was limited. Yet despite this, I believe that, taken as a whole, the positives outweighed the negatives.

http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/2009/11/seumas-milne-on-lessons-and.html


1989 unleashed across the region and then the former Soviet Union free-market shock therapy, mass robbery as privatisation, vast increases in inequality, and poverty and joblessness for tens of millions. Reunification in Germany in fact meant annexation, the takeover and closure of most of its industry, a political purge of more than a million teachers and other white-collar workers, a loss of women's rights, closure of free nurseries and mass unemployment……..

The western failure to recognise the shocking price paid by many east Europeans for a highly qualified freedom – the Economist this week dismissed them as "the old, the timid, the dim" – is only exceeded by the refusal to acknowledge that the communist system had benefits as well as obvious costs…….

Der Spiegel this year found that 57% of eastern Germans believed the GDR had "more good sides than bad sides", and even younger people rejected the idea that the state had been a dictatorship. Just as only one in five Hungarians believes that the country has changed for the better since 1989, only 11% of Bulgarians think ordinary people have benefited from the changes and most Russians and Ukrainians regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

This two-sided, Janus-like nature of 1989 is also reflected in its global and ideological impact. It kicked off the process that led to the end of the cold war. But by removing the world's only other superpower from the global stage, it also destroyed the constraints on US global power and paved the way for wars from the Gulf and Yugoslavia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/2009/11/eastern-takeover.html


We had been conditioned to expect a very poor country, but were surprised to see that most people were better dressed than back home in Britain and that the shops, far from being empty, were well-stocked. It was nice to see main streets not dominated by chain stores - and not a Mcdonald's in sight.

Instead of Western fast-food chains serving unhealthy junk food, the GDR, in common with other socialist countries, was full of publicly owned self-service restaurants where ordinary people could eat good hearty fare at affordable prices in a communal atmosphere.

I remember going to one restaurant in Magdeburg and chatting to a young married couple sitting on the same table. We got on so well that we exchanged addresses after just half an hour together.

Contrary to its usual depiction in the West as a grey, unwelcoming place, I found the GDR to be one of the friendliest places I had ever visited. The best thing about it was the people - kind, friendly and extremely helpful. Interesting, well-read and well-educated people who always looked you in the eye and didn't want to cheat you.

I experienced the same thing on my other visit to a European communist country, Yugoslavia, also in 1989. I stayed in a small guest house close to Lake Bohinj. The owner was a committed communist and strong supporter of the partisans. Each evening he would invite the guests to sit, eat and drink with him and he would tell stories of how the partisans defeated the nazis in WWII.
He told all the guests to feel as if they were at home. He even washed his guest's dirty laundry for no extra charge. He not only advocated socialism, he lived a socialist life - helping others for no monetary reward. He was one of the kindest men I have ever met in my life and I remembered thinking there and then that a system that can produce such warm-hearted and generous people surely must have something going for it.

Not long after my visit to the GDR, the Berlin Wall came down. People I had spoken to in the GDR said that their main criticism of the government was the restriction on foreign travel. But, as the recent BBC documentary series The Lost World Of Communism showed, there was no desire, even among those who did take part in street demonstrations in the autumn of 1989, for a wholesale dismantling of the socialist system. What many people had wanted was a less authoritarian form of socialism - no-one was calling for mass privatisation and the introduction of Thatcherism.

,as "totalitarian police states".

I respect the leftists who don't consider the USSR and it's allies as socialist for the reasons of the lack of democracy and true worker control.

But for the fake left that, instead of proving that the state socialist states were no holes of poverty and gulags, claims "BUT THIS WAS NOT REAL SOCIALISM THEY WERE EVIL WE ARE GOOD WE PROMISE" and itelf believes the propaganda from their dear Western enlightened goverments, I have nothing but hatred and scorn. This type of schizophrenia is called No True Scotsman fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman .

And when it comes to the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 and the Chinese famine of 1958-1961, you know, famine in China occured EVERY YEAR IN SOME PROVINCE before socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines "Between 108 BC and 1911 AD there were no fewer than 1,828 major famines in China, or one nearly every year in one or another province; however, the famines varied greatly in severity.". So blaming it on Mao is just plain ideologically conditioned idiocy, not that I like Mao, I consider him a pathetic failiure, and he is not representative of most communist leaders (fortunately). And when it comes to Russia, the first goverment under which paesants actually had enough to eat were the Bolsheviks http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/free-market-starvation/

The Soviet Union and China are now synonymous with starvation. There was a famine in the Ukraine in 1932 that killed 1.5 million people. Previously, during the Russian Civil War, there was a famine in 1921 that killed 9 million people. It is a simple truth that under Czardom, the peasant never had enough to eat. His life expectancy was a mere 32 years and lack of food played a role here.

Under Communism, the peasant had plenty of food to eat for the first time in centuries. In the early 1930′s, the Soviet Union saw the largest harvests in its history, big harvests that continued for decades. All of this is forgotten, and all we know is famine, famine, famine. One wonders how Stalin doubled life expectancy in the USSR while the people starved.

In China again, we hear that Communism starved the people. In 1958, it is true, there was a terrible famine, the worst in modern history, mostly caused by the stupidity of over-procurement by the state, that killed an astounding 15 million people.

Yet year and year out, millions of lives were being saved every year in China. Under Communism, with the exception of 1958, the Chinese peasants finally had enough food to eat. Like the Russian peasants, starvation and lack of food had stalked the Chinese peasant for centuries.

By the early 1970′s, the problem of food in China was finally solved for the first time in centuries. As with the USSR, China also doubled life expectancy under Mao. Once again, one wonders how this was achieved if the people were “starving” as the anti-Communists claim.

In Vietnam in 1944-45, 2 million died during deliberate starvation by French and Japanese capitalist forces when they seized the rice crop. One never hears of this famine. Only Communists starve people.

,which is evidenced by the fact how except for WW2, the 1932-33 famine and the 1947 famine the life expectancy was steadily going up and by the 1950s it was a modern industrialized country, free of any hunger. Yet I saw "leftists" to type things like "Stalin cut off teh food and water from his ppls [accurate representation with ther typical grammar]". The fact that the 3 Soviet famines were an exception from otherwise well fed country is never mentioned. Neither is the fact that the capitalist third world is slowly starving to death everydays, because, apparently, as long as the sweatshop slaves reproduce fast enough to offset it it is ok. And a country with 3 very brief famines in its 80 year long history which otherwise feeds its people well is apparently worse than a country that has constant low level starvation, apparently, bad harvests are caused by Sauron sorry I mean Stalin, and long term starvation is ok as long the sweatshop slaves work.

And I am not some armchair Western "tyrannophile" either. All of my relatives who are over 30 year old lived under communist regimes, so I know they had plenty of food and didn't feel being "brutally oppressed".

Don't be an apologizing wimp. Be proud that you are a communist/socialist. Just because capitalist regimes are trying to discredit every good that came out of the attempts at socialism practicised, does not mean you have to embrace their bullshit as truth and argue on vacuous, propagandistic premises.

Yes, communists have executed some people. The Jacobins of the French Revolution executed people too. Is therefore the democratic republic "evil" and inferior to monarchism just because of that? I am certain that monarchists claimed the same things about the newborn French Republic as the capitalists do about the USSR. I wouldn't be surprised if they portraied the French Republic as some hellhole filled with hunger and guillotines too.

[Toppler]

And no, I am not an "anti-revisionist" Marxist-Leninist. I am undecided currently, but I am leaning towards libertarian socialism. I don't think that the USSR is the proper model for a socialist society just as Jacobinism was not the proper model for burgeois democracy. Still, I am extremely irritated by the fact that supposed "leftists" believe the bullshit about the USSR and its allies being some "evil empire" that "starved its own people" and Stalin being described like he is Sauron or Satan. Also, the perception that Stalin was representative of the USSR as a whole in its history (as he ruled it for maybe 2/6 of its existence). I am very anti-Stalin, still, I am angered by falsification of history by capitalist dogma-makers, even when it comes to Stalin. And most of the time USSR was not Stalinist (not in the strict meaning of the word, before and after Stalin it had a similiar bureucratic structure but still, the period before and after Stalin is not comparable with his very real brutality and dictatorial, totalitarian rule).

[RedSonRising]

You should challenge it. It may not do much to change the teacher's methods or your classmates' minds, but just one voice reminding people that not everything put on a chalkboard is the correct interpretation of history will open doors for even the most skeptical once they encounter the subject again. It's educational dishonesty and ideological bullshit; you can respectfully argue for a better explanation in the classroom based on the former and the result will highlight the latter.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Could he do like that?
That's what I'm saying. But this wasn't regular school, it was secondary school(More like a prison really). He "taught" History and Psychology but a lot of the times we'd do random shit. Like one time he cleared the whole class room and taught us how to dance "like gentlemen". Was a weird class for sure.