not something i am planning to do or anything. but quite an interesting thing. for those of you who are ignorant of this like i was thich quang duc is the monk who, in 1963, did this in response to the oppression buddhists were receiving in vietnam due largely in part to the freaky first lady of vietnam at the time who was clinging to catholicism and was fine and dandy with the “monk barbeque”. why didn’t i learn about this in school ever? oh. because NONE of my history classes ever got past WWI. (not saying they would have mentioned this event, but i’ll give them the benefit of the doubt)
and yes, i have seen the cover of the first RATM album. how was i supposed to know that is what the picture is of?
see, a flaw in mass education? or a lack of forethought by a highschool social sciences department?
i had a modern american history and government class my senior year, we discussed everything from korea, vietnam, mr quang duc, all the way to the fall of the berlin wall and tiennanmen square.
but and this is a HUGE BUT(not that i have a big butt or something)
my social science teacher was very much a “big picture” person, so we studied history from a “how does this affect my today” perspective.
now on the topic of self-immolation… yikes. not really sure what it *proves* but you know… to each their own.
it seems that every history type class i took just was timeline classes and then we’d get behind and the end of the year would show up and the teacher would be all “yeah, so, read the rest of the book if you are interested” or he’d hand out some summary of the last however many years for some pathetic test that he finds mandatory.
i never EVER learned ANYTHING about vietnam, very little about the korean war or WWII, certainly nothing about watergate, much less anything about any of the presidents during any of those times. quite annoying.
ooh. and i even took AP US History. go figure.
I think our texts may have touched on Korea and Viet Nam, but certainly nothing past 1975 or so. Which is odd, considering that most textbook publishers really push buying new textbooks every year or two. Were the events of the previous 20 years so hard to put on paper? Probably not.
I wonder though, if the politicization of information plays a large role here. Is it possible to write about current events without spinning them? Once a certain period of time has passed, history belongs to the victor, so it’s easier to document it.
speaking of rage. i think they said it best.
“Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?”
-from testify
as for the teaching of said material…
i hate to break it to you jess but the minnesota education system is down. and it is not like some great strong bad dance party down. this is a topic of which i will remain semi-silent.
i do know that after being in TN and reading about the public education system here and talking to a few kids that go to it, MN is like going to prep school for free.