Dumbed Down History

Like I have said in this space, I have been learning a lot from blog discussions and following up with research of my own. It is a beautiful Saturday afternoon, the sun is shining and there is a nice breeze, so of course I am sitting inside at home reading and writing.

I have just read an article called “Getting Lincoln Half Right and Half Wrong” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo at http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo94.html. Following is a comparison between what I learned in school and what the article claims.

School	DiLorenzo
Lincoln was a good man.	Lincoln was a cold-hearted egoist.
Lincoln was a lawyer.	Lincoln was a wealthy railroad lawyer whose clients were mostly giant corporations.
Lincoln freed the slaves.	Lincoln was a white supremacist.
Lincoln preserved democracy.	Lincoln arrested political opponents and shut down opposition newspapers.
Lincoln preserved the nation.	Lincoln destroyed the Jeffersonian system.

I am not a Lincoln scholar so I am not in a position to say which side of the table is right, if either. I would, however, tend towards believing DiLorenzo.

What I will question today is what I was taught in history classes. Living for many years in a post-communist country, I know that my Czech friends and acquaintances were exposed daily to communist dogma in school. Now it seems to me that my experience in the US was not very different. We were obviously taught history from a slanted angle aimed at convincing us that America was the greatest country in the world and our way was the best way. For example: we were taught not that we pointlessly massacred the indigenous populations of North America, but that we were guided westward by “manifest destiny” – clearly nothing more than political propaganda.

Why were we taught that way? Education should not be dumbed down for children. History classes would have been much more interesting if we had been given the opportunity to discuss and debate, if we had been able to decide for ourselves whether our country’s leaders had made the right decisions. Developing an ability to think critically is so much more important than memorising names and dates. It seems that our education system was designed to produce factory workers rather than thinkers. When we grow up we watch dumbed down news so that we continue to not think for ourselves. It now seems to me that it is all a plot to keep power in the hands of those who have always held it, to preserve the status quo.