How can you be 43 and not know who Hitler was and what he did?

[keroro gunsou]

52. Another Wisconsin education survivor here

Granted I was educated in private schools in tighty-whitey Waukesha county, my middle school from 6th to 8th nothing but US history, with at least one quarter each year devoted to Wisconsin history. There was the option to read “off book” historical topics like European, Asian, or Mezo-American history, the teachers encouraged it. When we got to the world wars, more emphasis was added on the world history of the conflict, not just America’s role in it, so we did touch on Hitler and the Holocaust. High school was 50/50 US and world history, but if you wanted to focus on one over the other, there were classes to do it. Independent projects were a big deal at my high school, especially in the AP classes.

We spent a full half of a semester on the Civil War my sophomore year, whereas my cousins in Texas barely spent a week on it when they were in high school. Fortunately, my cousins were smart enough to do research on their own, encouraged by their parents and me… and they suffered for it grade wise and socially.

My only complaint was some of the instructors were, as for a lack of a more polite way to say it, Christian zealots and tried to frame their lessons as a way to prove that their brand of Catholicism was the one true religion and everyone else were godless heathens. And they graded as such, much to mine and my parent’s annoyance. Whatever.

The subject of history, much like education as a whole, is a fucking joke in this country. We need national standards to educate and not indoctrinate obedient little drones/future republican voters.