Challenge: Colonial American history given nearly as much weight as post Revolution

[Jiraiyathegallant]

With a PoD of 1900, how can we have Colonial History get proportionately as much weight in schools as Post Independence? For my American history classes, we rarely spent more than a few days on Colonial times, usually spending more time on any given war. It seems strange that 160 years get almost no time for learning.

By proportionately, I mean nearly 40%.

 

[Viriato]

Maybe because I grew up in New England it seemed that we focussed way more on colonial history than the revolution. I think most of 5th and 6th grade history was spent on the Pilgrims etc. with field trips to Plymouth etc and some other colonial houses that I cannot remember what they were. We even had some sort of colonial day where we churned butter, spun wool etc. Even in 1st grade they had us dress like little Pilgrims despite most of use in the class having no English ancestry.

 

[Sirius]

The easiest route I see is for the culture to go left quicker. In that case, a big focus of American history classes might be the struggle between settlers and native peoples, which would necessitate a more in-depth focus on the colonial period.

 

[raharris1973]

Maybe it was an east coast thing (New Jersey), but American history public school curricula then in the 1980s for 7-8th grade and 10-11th grade always had a first years that took till end of year to get to Civil War and Reconstruction (with this last part very rushed), so colonial was always 50% of that year or 25% of the total. And additional elementary school forays into social studies/historical stuff had some colonial and Native American emphasis too.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Maybe you could have the media mythologise the early settlers rather than the cowboys, though I'd imagine they'd concentrate on the Northern more religious colonies rather than commercial plantations of the south. I doubt there'd be much mention of indentured servants or transported convicts though. From what I can tell those elements of the colonial period are largely ignored or even deliberately supressed.

 

[samcster94]

The easiest route I see is for the culture to go left quicker. In that case, a big focus of American history classes might be the struggle between settlers and native peoples, which would necessitate a more in-depth focus on the colonial period.

How do you propose that, especially when most people today live in a state that wasn’t one of the original 13.

 

[Sirius]

How do you propose that, especially when most people today live in a state that wasn’t one of the original 13.

Well, I'd expect the stories of American Indian tribes from all over the continent would get a fair amount of time to start the course. The encounter with the colonists would follow as a sort of rising action, before the Revolution and the nineteenth century Indian wars. I don't envision history classes in this alternate popular history education focusing eclusively on the colonial period, it just seems like that approach would force a deeper examination of the two cultures' interactions.

 

[Grey Wolf]

The History of the States - make it a course, so that people should know how each one developed.

 

[raharris1973]

Maybe because I grew up in New England it seemed that we focussed way more on colonial history than the revolution. I think most of 5th and 6th grade history was spent on the Pilgrims etc. with field trips to Plymouth etc and some other colonial houses that I cannot remember what they were. We even had some sort of colonial day where we churned butter, spun wool etc. Even in 1st grade they had us dress like little Pilgrims despite most of use in the class having no English ancestry.

New Jersey was very similar. Maybe west of the coast is all different.

Of course, we're getting lectured by englishmen (or boys) of who knows what age on what US history curricula are.

Mr. OP @Jiraiyathegallant - where did you go to K-12 school, and in what decade?

 

[raharris1973]

Maybe you could have the media mythologise the early settlers rather than the cowboys, though I'd imagine they'd concentrate on the Northern more religious colonies rather than commercial plantations of the south. I doubt there'd be much mention of indentured servants or transported convicts though. From what I can tell those elements of the colonial period are largely ignored or even deliberately supressed.

Maybe its an east coast thing but we had more time on colonial pioneers than western cowboys. Convicts weren't discussed much either.

The History of the States - make it a course, so that people should know how each one developed.

My mother in the early 1950s briefly lived in Pennsylvania, and a year was devoted specifically to Pennsylvania history.

Certain states with a strong state identity, like Texas, devote at least a year to state history.


--My main recollection of history education is that adequate general texts and curricula (not in depth or scholarly, but adequate) were available throughout New Jersey public schools, and I happened to read them, and read ahead, and read stuff we never actually got to in class. It's just that most students cared so little about the subject they didn't retain any of the material at all or for any longer than testing.

 

[Driftless]

A part of the issue is the storytelling aspect of the Revolution. It's exciting, it was an easily told tale of existential survival of the country, not just individuals. For many of us, the way that history was re-told in the 50's thru 70's was by historians shaped by World War 2, where the war was often described as a capital "C" Crusade.

Also, its hard to get your audience to buy into the idea that you stole your country from the locals.... It's far easier to demonize them and make them the bad guys. It's also easier to gloss over that a substantial part of our startup was built on the backs of slave labor and indentured servitude - not very glorious.

 

[marathag]

The easiest route I see is for the culture to go left quicker. In that case, a big focus of American history classes might be the struggle between settlers and native peoples, which would necessitate a more in-depth focus on the colonial period.

Why do you think 'The Left' would pick up on that? Pre 1960-Left wasn't the same as post 1960

It would be formed as just another class suffering oppression by the big bad Capitalists

 

[marathag]

It's also easier to gloss over that a substantial part of our startup was built on the backs of slave labor and indentured servitude - not very glorious.

But the Evil British Nobility © ® ™ forced that onto the new settlers

 

[Driftless]

But the Evil British Nobility © ® ™ forced that onto the new settlers

Our Alien Overlords😁.

That thought brings up another interesting twist in how American history was taught in the 20th Century. Loyalists were few, and all were craven bootlickers of the King and his corrupt local lackeys.

*edit* I know as kid and even later on, I lapped up what I was taught as gospel. It wasn't till I became a wretched Old Fart that I took a more shaded view of how we got here....😉

 

[Driftless]

On a different tack, for most of the later 20th Century and into the 21st, in my area, Wisconsin history was focused on by fouth graders (9 &10 years old). Much of that cirricula covered the early French explorers and settlers.

There was some Native American history being taught, especially regarding the effigy mound builders, but it was pretty generic, in large part due to a lack of documented history and limited archseology - to that point. Some of the arcaeology gaps are slowly being filled in nowadays.

 

[Sirius]

Why do you think 'The Left' would pick up on that? Pre 1960-Left wasn't the same as post 1960

It would be formed as just another class suffering oppression by the big bad Capitalists

You're certainly correct there. One thought I have is, what if a socialist movement seized power in the US sometime between 1900 and 1933? In that setting, a cultural-left like that of the 60s, animated by racial and gendered concerns, might have more far-reaching consequences (rather than being forced to retreat into academia, a shell of itself, as in OTL).

 

[raharris1973]

It's far easier to demonize them and make them the bad guy

When was the last time in an American public school classroom American Indians were called demons, savages or bad guys in the curriculum. Some random, rural district in 1960? Indians as villains lasted longer in pop culture westerns than in classrooms folks. Also, even in portrayals focused on a white protagonist dealing with a physical violent threat from Indians, acknowledgment his people were pushed around and provoked was common in some manner in a majority of westerns produced from the 40s on.

 

[Driftless]

When was the last time in an American public school classroom American Indians were called demons, savages or bad guys in the curriculum. Some random, rural district in 1960? Indians as villains lasted longer in pop culture westerns than in classrooms folks. Also, even in portrayals focused on a white protagonist dealing with a physical violent threat from Indians, acknowledgment his people were pushed around and provoked was common in some manner in a majority of westerns produced from the 40s on.

That's much of the world I grew up in.... Westerns were the order of the day on TV and still a common movie topic. Any positive portrayals of Native Americans were very few and very far between. The non-ironic use of "the only good indian is a dead indian" was common in media - and for kids that crept into what they learned in school - not because it was taught, but because that vile notion wasn't corrected.

 

[raharris1973]

That's much of the world I grew up in.... Westerns were the order of the day on TV and still a common movie topic. Any positive portrayals of Native Americans were very few and very far between. The non-ironic use of "the only good indian is a dead indian" was common in media - and for kids that crept into what they learned in school - not because it was taught, but because that vile notion wasn't corrected.

How old are you and what state are you from?

 

[JSilvy]

Maybe it was an east coast thing (New Jersey), but American history public school curricula then in the 1980s for 7-8th grade and 10-11th grade always had a first years that took till end of year to get to Civil War and Reconstruction (with this last part very rushed), so colonial was always 50% of that year or 25% of the total. And additional elementary school forays into social studies/historical stuff had some colonial and Native American emphasis too.

Same. As a native of New Jersey, I feel like I spent a lot of time learning about colonial history. I imagine this is less the case though the further west you go.
Honestly, I've always wondered how weird it would feel to grow up in California spending so much of my American history classes just learning about stuff that happened three thousand miles away, especially given the fact that I grew up in the state that served as the crossroads of the revolution.