So this is what they mean by “voluntary”
by digby
So this is how that throwback Colorado school board proposes to change the AP History curriculum:
As an example, I note our slavery history. Yes, we practiced slavery. But we also ended it voluntarily, at great sacrifice, while the practice continues in many countries still today! Shouldn’t our students be provided that viewpoint? This is part of the argument that America is exceptional. Does our APUSH Framework support or denigrate that position?
Apparently, this woman doesn’t know that one of the most exceptional historical facts about America was that we were last Western nation to outlaw slavery by a long shot. And I’d guess she missed class the day they discussed that little dust-up from 1860 to 1865. (Of course, it’s always possible that like so many wingnuts she has thinks the civil war wasn’t about slavery at all. It’s just a coincidence that the country “voluntarily ended it” after over half a million people died over the most important moral cause humankind has ever known: states’ rights.
This is why you need teacher’s unions and tenure. When people like this take over school boards (and this isn’t the first time) they will happily fire anyone who teaches evolution and refuses to teach the kids that the US “voluntarily ended slavery.”
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