"... before being rebuffed by the State Board of Education.... Aicha Davis, a Democratic board member representing Dallas and Fort Worth... told The Washington Post on Friday that when looking through a hefty package of recommendations, she saw the proposed language the group wanted to suggest, and 'I immediately questioned it. I am not going to support anything that describes the slave trade as ‘involuntary relocation'.... I’m not going to support anything that diminishes that journey.'
Part of the proposed draft standards for the curriculum directed students to 'compare journeys to America, including voluntary Irish immigration and involuntary relocation of African people during colonial times,' the Texas Tribune reported and Davis confirmed to The Post.
She said that such comparisons were 'absolutely' not fair. 'The journey for the Irish folk is totally different from the journey of Africans,' she said, adding that any comparisons 'will distort a lot of things in a young child’s mind.'"
It was an invitation to the children to compare things, that is, to think for themselves. Why wouldn't you imagine that the children could grasp how much worse it is to be forced into slavery?
What is wrong with teaching the tragic story of the Irish? Why diminish their suffering and slough them off as "Irish folk"? History isn't a matter of deciding which people suffered the most, then only telling their story and forbidding all comparisons, but what school boards do never has much to do with ensuring that history is taught in a soundly professional way.
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If you want kids to gain an appreciation for what is was like for a slave ask them to think about what it would be like if someone controlled when you slept, what you did during the day, where you could go, who you could associate with, provided you with food, clothing and a place to sleep, sometimes if you worked extra you might get some money you could spend on candy or other things but never to improve you situation. And would punish you if you didn't do as you were told.
Then tell them to imagine if it was lifelong unless the person in controlled decided to free you and the same condition was passed on to your descendants.
It might take some time, but many might be able to relate to such a life.
Involuntary relocation sounds a lot like undocumented immigrant. I wonder, as we dispose of the first term, can we use the same arguments to dispose of the second?
Wah! Don't move my cheese and don't eff with my claim to victimhood! Wah!
Odd, forty years ago we were taught that the way immigrants came to American was different when compared to the way Africans came here. Was that wrong? Feels like this lady is desperately looking for something to complain about even when that thing is completely logical and uncontroversial.
What do grifters grift when the grifting drifts away?
Slavery implies denial of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and involves affirmative discrimination, involuntary service, and redistributive change.
Black people would like children to believe that ONLY black people have ever been slaves, therefore they are due a privilege.
Plenty of white people have been "slaves." I put the word "slaves" in quotation marks because for the most part that's not the proper term. Historically, for thousands of years, before the widespread use of banks, people borrowed money on the promise that they'd work it off if they were unable to pay back the borrowings. "Indentured" servitude was the way credit worked before the advent of Experian and MasterCard. It's how a Bedouin could borrow for his first camel, for example.
This doesn't diminish the black experience, but instead puts it into some perspective. Plenty of black people borrowed money and paid it back on time, never to be indentured, or "indebted." Some did not. Lots of white people too. Lots of every other color of people, too, including many Jews. Virtually every race has been "enslaved" if that's your definition of the word.
For the lender, the proper treatment of those who were paying back with labor instead of currency was vital. If they mistreated the debtors, they might disappear altogether. This could cause all sorts of financial woe for the lender.
The problem with this system was that it encountered the Democrat Party in the United States and that, as they say, was that. Democrats being fond of whips, you see.
What is wrong with teaching the tragic story of the Irish?
That's just white people...
Signed,
W. Goldberg
I was just getting ready to say the same thing as tim maguire at 6:56, so...
Why wouldn't you imagine that the children could grasp how much worse it is to be forced into slavery?
That's the Whole Point.
We NEED to not use the words; or refer to the actions..
That way, they'll NEVER realize how bad things were. We WANT Them to think THEY have it BAD, Now
slaves were paid. it was just undocumented.
The phrase they're looking for is:
Involuntary immigrants.
Wage slavery is enforced by cancel culture that steals pensions. Slavery Is coming back..
Do school children start history in second grade? My earliest memory of history lessons is middle of third grade. Or the British equivalent. Roman invasion of Britain. Specifically recall drawing in my notebook a picture of Roman soldiers kneeling on the beach collecting seashells on order of the Emperor Caligula. For proof of his invasion. If we were taught anything else about Caligula I don't remember it. Catholic schooling, so I had already learned something of the Romans and their bad behaviors towards subject peoples, as recounted in the Gospels, in religion classes.
I believe it was Thomas Sowell who pointed out that the death rate on ships bringing Irish immigrants to the U.S. was actually higher than on slave ships. Immigrants paid in advance, so ship captains had no incentive to spend any money at all helping them stay alive: no ship doctor, no supply of food for anyone foolish enough not to bring enough of their own, and so on.
Second grade seems pretty early for this. I mean they still eat paste. Not sure this will really have the meaning and understanding of what slavery really means at this age.
Very poor interpretation by either the Post or the democrat, I am surprised you didn't note it. They were calling the slave trade involuntary relocation, not slavery itself.
The recommendation also didn't seem to be meant as a wholesale replacement (like undocumented is being pushed to replace illegal), rather it looks like just a convenient descriptor to compare and contrast two different methods of immigration into the country/colonies.
American Children. Especially white ones need to be taught the highpoints of American history:
01) Slavery
02) Stealing land from Indians
03) Stealing land from Mexicans
04) Dropping A-bombs on Japanese
05) Putting J/A in Concentration camps
06) Gays, Gays, Gays!
07) Robber barrons. Oh wait, scratch that. Billionaires are good.
08) Destroying Labor unions. Oh wait, that's a good thing too.
09) Noble white women somehow bearing up under male chauvanism .
10) Damn those WASPs for letting my Grandparents come here!
Most American Black people are remarkably ignorant about the history of slavery, especially anything other than slavery as it existed in the United States.
They are also largely ignorant about the violent crime and abortion rates for Black Americans.
The Left likes it that way.
"History isn't a matter of deciding which people suffered the most, then only telling their story and forbidding all comparisons..."
Now who's being naive, Kay?
This is censorship plain and simple. If I can't groom children into white supremacy, I quit!
"Very poor interpretation by either the Post or the democrat, I am surprised you didn't note it. They were calling the slave trade involuntary relocation, not slavery itself."
I said the same thing. "involuntary relocation" is not a term used for second graders. It looks like descriptive text discussing some simple lessons explaining the difference between immigration and slavery. It's a standard, not curriculum.
I can already hear the chanting......
"No, involuntary relocations!!
We need reparations!!"
I despair of how to deal with such politically controversial subjects. When I was a kid (the 1950s), the schools in Corpus Christi, Texas, tried to put a rosy cast on antebellum times, but we all understood slavery existed, and even as a child, I was a bit skeptical how happy slaves were with their lot. I read Uncle Tom's Cabin. The pendulum swings, but it's hard to believe we're doing a better job.
As a descendant of an Irish indentured servant, I can tell you that black people were not the only ones in bondage. My ancestor, Howell Dawdy, ran away from his master in Salem, New Jersey, in November of 1771. He ended up in the uplands of South Carolina when things got too hot for him and his family in New Jersey, served in the Revolutionary War and got a land grant in Tennessee and was one of the founders of the town of Shelbyville.
Althouse writes, "History isn't a matter of deciding which people suffered the most, then only telling their story and forbidding all comparisons, but what school boards do never has much to do with [ensuring] that history is taught in a soundly professional way."
Unfortunately, the textbook authors often do not teach history in a soundly professional manner, either.
Aicha Davis ought not to spout uninformed opinions about slavery. Evidently, she believes her conjectural ancestry gives her special insight, but that is a common illusion among grievance mongers. A black American, born in the late 20th century has no greater understanding of the conditions and experiences of her slave ancestors (assuming there are any) than Quaestor has of the jurisprudence in the Restoration law courts. There are pages to be read, but what we read or have been told are not our own experiences, no matter how emotionally stimulated we become by the narrative. People who are prone to such projections are, in a word, unbalanced. (Fucking nuts is the clinical term.)
It is ironic that Miss Davis chooses to elevate her delusional experience over the delusional experience of the Irish. Well I remember sitting in a bar in Armagh listening to an Irishman "remember" Oliver Cromwell. Good grief.
Lot of problems would be avoided without this hubris of thinking that you're better than past generations and can reinvent things better than they did.
Little kids are not going to grasp the horror of chattel slavery of Africans. They can begin to grasp slavery and in a way that also offers hope and justice the way it has historically been taught -- the sale of a brother to some strangers, 400 years of bondage and forced labor in Egypt, and their liberation by God.
I have no idea from this story what the actual thinking was behind this language in the context of the lesson and its purpose. Typical of journalism in making a "story" out of it. I cannot fathom doing this teaching well with second grade students. However, it is perfectly reasonable to ask kids who can comprehend slavery and other kinds of institutionalized coercive labor to compare them. And there is a very important dimension to such teaching that is almost always lost in the way it's done now. That is that for thousands of years, slavery was never really questioned in part because almost everyone outside a tiny elite was a dependent of some sort and under someone else's thumb. Slavery was simply the lowest rung on a ladder that everyone else was on as well. Indentured servants, Irish peasants, convicts, whatever. We can kid ourselves, but their miseries are almost as alien to us as those of the slaves in a Louisiana sugar mill.
I have no memory of when I first learned about Black slavery in America. I think I was in the 3d grade when Mom helped me read Huckleberry Finn. I do remember seeing Gone With The Wind many times and assumimg that its portrayal of antebellum slavery reflected the way the "good" slaveowners treated their slaves.
I recently read Born In Blackness by Howard French. Do you really want to know how badly-treated slaves in America were? Do you want to know in what countries or colonies they were treated worst and when? Do you want to know the role that Black Africans played in creating and operating the slave trade? No grade-schooler can grasp the truths of slavery and the slave trade. Don't pretend otherwise.
Some of my ancestors came here from Ireland. They came to find better opportunities, and generally succeeded. Others came from Germany, trying to escape the Prussians who were taking over the previously independent German states, and who were conscripting young men into the Prussian Army. At least one of them would qualify under today's standards as an illegal immigrant. Among my English ancestors, some came as indentured servants, i.e., temporary slaves. How old do children have to be to understand how this continent was peopled?
I think that teaching young children about our national history -- particularly about the difficult parts -- is hard. I wouldn't presume to critique sincere and good-faith attempts to do so.
You could make the argument that "involuntary relocation" would work given the comparison being drawn, but it's such a hot-button issue, why even go there?
The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were not effective in the Democrat run former Confederate States because the former slaves could not read and write. Teaching them was a crime during slavery. That was the dumbest move the Democrat ruling slave owner class ever made…wait, that is still their #1 way to enslave the black inner city kids today.
Second grade is too early, agreed. That said, I doubt that most young people who teach in grade school have that good a grasp of the past anyway, so it's a moot question IMO.
'Involuntary relocation' is a fancy ballet for 2nd graders. Just say slavery and explain it: Having to work really hard on whatever somebody says you have to work on, and never getting to do what you want to do, for your whole life.
Why was Joe Biden the first Orish man of his family to go to College?
Damn those WASPs!
Oh wait, Biden can trace his parentage back to before the Revolution. And his father was a wealthy businessman. Looks like there's some Englishmen in his family background too.
But anyway, Orish Joe biden triumphed all that Proddy-stant oppression. Damn those WASPs for letting the Orish in.
Duke Dan said...
Second grade seems pretty early for this. I mean they still eat paste. Not sure this will really have the meaning and understanding of what slavery really means at this age.
Now do when they are old enough; to decide to cut off their sex organs, and life long hormone therapy
Funny how the Krauts, the I-ties, the bohunks and square-heads, never complained about "no Swedes, Germans, italians, or Poles need apply" signs.
That's probably because they couldn't speak English. Unlike the Orish.
As best I can gather from reading local news about it, the WAPO story is a straight up lie. There was no instruction to use the term "involuntary relocation"; it was used once in a model curriculum to the effect that 2nd-grade teachers should distinguish between people who arrived here voluntarily and people who didn't.
The whole thing is the worst kind of fake news: racially inflammatory and false.
Duke Dan,
{ they still eat paste }
So do some heads of state.
There's two ways you can approach history:
1) As an adult, understanding how the past was different from the present. And comparing say, the USA in 1900 vs. the rest of humanity in 1900. As opposed to comparing 1900 USA vs. 2022 USA. I can assure you that we don't have slavery in 2022, because we're better than people in 1850, but because our material conditions are much, much, different. But that approach is full of 500 shades of gray.
2) As a fairy tale. with goodies and baddies. American HS and Colleges teach History as fairytale, because that's what the average person wants to hear. They want a "story". Noble good guys. Evil bad guys. No shades of grey. No putting yourself back in the past and understanding. So why are they being taught the "america is evil" fairytale? Why not tell them the old fairytale? And make them proud to be Americans?
"I doubt that most young people who teach in grade school have that good a grasp of the past anyway, so it's a moot question IMO."
Average SAT score for elementary school teachers is just slightly lower than the average SAT score for college graduate (not all SAT testers, just those who got through college). The idea that elementary school teachers are morons is about 30 years out of date.
From "Texas education board rejects proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation’" (WaPo).
========
were they not enslaved already by other Africans before they were put on ships bound for other shores >>> more like involuntary custodial hand over
JK Brown @6:55 is describing childhood.
"Average SAT score for elementary school teachers is just slightly lower than the average SAT score for college graduate (not all SAT testers, just those who got through college). The idea that elementary school teachers are morons is about 30 years out of date."
Teachers have degrees, so you are saying they are below average on the SAT. There's a bragging point if I ever heard one.
But check out the El-Ed curriculum. Funsie math, funsie science, no foreign language required....
Even back when I was in school (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) El-Ed was widely thought as TE pud curriculum.
They do not want to talk about the Irish or the Chinese because black people want the monopoly on victimhood.
They do not want to talk about the Irish or the Chinese because black people want the monopoly on victimhood.
Educational Realist, I actually know some young people who want to teach grade school.
They are not very smart, and their knowledge of the past is slanted and exiguous.
rcocean never took the history classes I took, or the ones I taught.
Those are all facts.
I read somewhere that across history, more white people have been pressed into slavery than black people, but I'd have to go back and verify that. I've read that in the Caribbean, Barbados for example, Irish people were traded and treated as slaves, the so-called 'Black Irish' in early colonial days. Once slavery was abolished in the British Empire, the arrangement became one of indentured servitude in exchange for transport to the New World.
"Teachers have degrees, so you are saying they are below average on the SAT. There's a bragging point if I ever heard one."
No, I'm saying that elementary school teachers are slightly below average for *college graduates* on the SAT, which is quite different. When you see published SAT scores and averages they are for all seniors (not even college bound seniors).
In other words, elementary school teachers aren't the bottom of the barrel, like social work or African American studies. And that's on average: white and Asian elementary school teachers are almost certainly closer to average while black and Hispanic teachers are lower--but among black and Hispanic college graduates, elementary school teachers are one of the higher scoring groups.
As for bragging rights, it's fricking elementary school. No need to be a rocket scientist. They have to pass a test demonstrating high school knowledge in all subjects in order to graduate as an ed major--and trust me, a lot of college degrees don't demand that much.
High school academic teachers have average SAT scores well above the mean for college graduates.
"Educational Realist, I actually know some young people who want to teach grade school.
They are not very smart, and their knowledge of the past is slanted and exiguous."
Oh, well, you personally know them! My goodness. That must count for...oh, wait, it counts for nothing. There's tons of data, and your personal opinion isn't worth much here.
It doesn't matter what they want. If they can't pass the credential test, then they won't be ed majors and won't teach grade school. If they can pass the credential test, then your personal assessment of their smarts is simply wrong.
The people who couldn't make it in "Communication studies" wound up in education.
Blogger Narayanan said...
From "Texas education board rejects proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation’" (WaPo).
========
"were they not enslaved already by other Africans before they were put on ships bound for other shores >>> more like involuntary custodial hand over"
The fact is very few europeans ever ventured far into the interior of Africa for slaves. Slave were brought to them by the leaders of other tribes in trade for european goods. Often time the slave the Portugese traded for were the leavings after the Arabs had first pick.
Education Realist (I got your handle wrong earlier, sorry), I stand by my assessment, which is based on a lifetime on the campus of an overgrown normal school that cranked out a lot of teachers and educrats (as well as fashion merchandising and resort management majors).
"High school knowledge in all subjects." ALL subjects? Please elaborate.
The Ed El major was a joke in the 70s and has not really improved since then, and considering how dumbed down everything has become since, the stats don't impress me much.
What is wrong with teaching the tragic story of the Irish? Why diminish their suffering and slough them off as "Irish folk"?
When you are planning to genocide white people, it doesn't help to portray their ancestors in a sympathetic light.
Just out of curiosity, who in the world would elect to take the SAT's after they've complete a university degree? And why would it be considered relevant?
Ireland. Name another country with a smaller population today than 1842.
"Just out of curiosity, who in the world would elect to take the SAT's after they've complete a university degree? And why would it be considered relevant?"
I am referring to the average SAT score of an 18 year old who went on to become a college graduate. So take the entire population of SAT takers, then later on narrow the pool of scores to reflect only those who graduated from college.
"The Ed El major was a joke in the 70s and has not really improved since then, and considering how dumbed down everything has become since, the stats don't impress me much."
Doesn't matter what the Ed El major is. The test they have to take in order to get the degree is what matters. The average SAT scores of elementary school teachers increased dramatically from the mid 90s to the early 2000s and has remained much higher, all because of increased test requirements.
In short, you don't know what you're talking about.
Tell us about the knowledge of "all subjects" required for teaching high school, please.
"Tell us about the knowledge of "all subjects" required for teaching high school, please."
No, I said the test for elementary school teachers requires a demonstration of ability at roughly high school (non-honors) knowledge in all subjects.
High school academic teachers have to demonstrate knowledge equivalent to passing an AP test in the subject, or college-level expertise.
I'll take your word for the credentialing hoops, E R, and just note that there are some weasel words (roughly, knowledge equivalent to) in them.
And without knowing the definition of "all subjects" I remain doubtful of the overall mental acuity of the mass of teacher-track youngsters--leave aside the weirdness revealed at LoTT by presumably successful ed-school grads.
Neither the teachers I had (HS '71) or those my son had (HS '04) were of much account, but maybe things are actually better now and I have missed it. I was still dealing with them (in the guise of grad students and in-service course attendees, mostly) as late as '15. Not to mention the many interactions I had with students of all ages and types who were dragged through the university library by their teachers.
I despaired.
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