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fandomhigh2014-09-26 03:40 pm
professor-lyman.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2014-09-26 03:40 pm
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American History: Lies Your Other Teachers Taught You [September 26, 2014, 2nd period]
"Today we're going to start talking about the Pilgrims," Josh said, "and their Puritanical viewpoints that have basically made the American psyche such a fun bundle of neuroses and obsession with sex." He leaned back against his desk and sipped from his coffee mug. "So Columbus showed up in 1492 and the Pilgrims landed on Plymoth Rock in 1620 and the history books are pretty much silent about the intervening hundred years. And that's bullshit. The first non-Native settlers in the country we know as the US were African slaves left in South Carolina by Spanish settlers. A third of the United States has been Spanish longer than it's been American--call Fox News, tell them that and if Bill O'Reilly's head explodes, I'll give you extra credit--and even if you don't start with what happened in history in the West and South--the Dutch were in Albany, New York by 1614 and the English themselves had setted in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. So why do we narratively begin our origin story with the guys with the buckles on their hats?"
He took another sip. "Well, the narrative out of Virginia isn't nearly as palatable, for one. They kidnapped local tribesmembers and forced them to teach them how to farm, spent time digging holes in the ground pointlessly searching for gold, spent time fighting each other and starving to death...compared to Jamestown, the Plymoth colony was polite, clean, and religiously forthright. It's a lot easy to frame the story of American exceptionalism around people searching for religious freedom, making peace with their neighbors and sharing a big meal than the greedy, murderous bastards further south."
Josh smiled at the class. "I'm not gonna make you wear construction paper hats or anything, though I was tempted. I'm just going to tell you one more thing that most textbooks gloss past: how Squanto knew English. He'd been taken into slavery by a British slave raid and sold to slavers in Spain. He then escaped, made his way to England and then tried to return home via Newfoundland, only to discover that the plague that the settlers of the New World had unwittingly unleashed on the native inhabitants of the continent had completely wiped out his tribe, so...oops. The Pilgrims moved right into the abandoned village, which they then thanked God for, reinforcing the idea in their mind that the plague had been sent by God to make way for white Christian dudes in the New World."
He made a face. "And that's been the prevailing viewpoint pretty much every since. All right. How does this new information reframe how you see the origins of the United States?"
He took another sip. "Well, the narrative out of Virginia isn't nearly as palatable, for one. They kidnapped local tribesmembers and forced them to teach them how to farm, spent time digging holes in the ground pointlessly searching for gold, spent time fighting each other and starving to death...compared to Jamestown, the Plymoth colony was polite, clean, and religiously forthright. It's a lot easy to frame the story of American exceptionalism around people searching for religious freedom, making peace with their neighbors and sharing a big meal than the greedy, murderous bastards further south."
Josh smiled at the class. "I'm not gonna make you wear construction paper hats or anything, though I was tempted. I'm just going to tell you one more thing that most textbooks gloss past: how Squanto knew English. He'd been taken into slavery by a British slave raid and sold to slavers in Spain. He then escaped, made his way to England and then tried to return home via Newfoundland, only to discover that the plague that the settlers of the New World had unwittingly unleashed on the native inhabitants of the continent had completely wiped out his tribe, so...oops. The Pilgrims moved right into the abandoned village, which they then thanked God for, reinforcing the idea in their mind that the plague had been sent by God to make way for white Christian dudes in the New World."
He made a face. "And that's been the prevailing viewpoint pretty much every since. All right. How does this new information reframe how you see the origins of the United States?"
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Listen to the lecture
Re: Listen to the lecture
Clearly, her previous history classes had been fantastic.
Discuss!
Re: Discuss!
Re: Discuss!
Re: Discuss!
Talk to Josh
OOC