New Report Shows High Schools Are Misleading (Or Lying To) Students About Labor History

[kpete]

A new report shows major problems with the way American textbooks teach labor history to students. Specifically:

The report found that these textbooks often present labor history in a biased, negative way, focusing on strikes and strike violence while giving little or no attention to the employer abuse and violence that caused the strikes.


............................

In addition, it notes that the textbooks virtually ignore:

The role of unions in passing protections and reforms such as the eight-hour work day, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, occupational safety and health, the end of abusive child labor, and environmental protection;

Unions’ strong support for the civil rights movement; and
The role unions played in the 1960s in particular, when the rise of public sector unions brought many more Americans into the middle class and gave new rights to public employees.

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"It paints a devastating picture of distortion and omission. Too often, labor’s role in U.S. history is misrepresented, downplayed, or ignored. The result is that most American students have little sense of how the labor movement changed the lives of Americans for the better. A vital piece of U.S. history is disappearing before our eyes."

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http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/09/06/report-textbooks-ignore-union-contributions/
http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/new-report-shows-high-schools-are

[HockeyMom]

1. Teachers are Union themselves

Besides myself, my Dad was Union (ILA), and NY schools (even parochial where I went) taught about unions. I could certainly judge what they were teaching from what I heard from my Dad as a child. When I was working in a class as a TA in Florida, the subject came up and, unfortunately, the teacher knew little about unions other than her own. So I got up and gave a lecture to the students using my, my Dad's, school's, and legal training. Those of us you know and have lived this, NEED to get the word out to the student's ourselves.

[WingDinger]

2. At least the Texas fires could burn the textbook propaganda mills.

[hifiguy]

3. Everyone who is surprised by this

stand on your head.

Truthful information is not necessary to create compliant, unquestioning drones.

[Romulox]

4. You mean my Prius WASN'T made by the UAW in Portland????

Oh! They call it "Portland". Like "Port-land"--a land where a PORT is. Maybe my Prius came on a boat from overseas??? :think:

[CrispyQ]

5. I've told this before.

A few years ago the local grocer's union was in negotiations with management & I asked the young clerk at the store how it was going. "Oh, I would never join a union!" she said with utter disgust in her voice & on her face.

"Let me ask you something," I said. "If you work over 40 hours a week, do you get overtime? Do you get vacation? Sick time? Breaks? Do you have benefits? Are your work conditions safe? Cuz let me tell you, management didn't give us those things out of the kindness of their hearts. Unions fought long & hard for those things & if you think those things are safe, think again. The war is on."

I'm sure she thought, "What an old fart."

A few weeks ago someone noted that all those born since 1980, all they've ever heard is that unions are bad & social security is going broke.

[xmas74]

12. That's why I've drilled it into my kid's head

what unions really represent instead of what she hears on the news and reads everywhere. Without unions we're all screwed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Should I act shocked or 'thing?

[EC]

7. I was just wondering about this myself yesterday.

I figured it was the parents, but I guess the schools are the guilty party. I've noticed that the young people today seem to think it was union "thugs" that caused all the violence when the unions were forming, not the other way around. They likely just cannot believe that companies would send in Pinkerton goons to beat up and kill union organizers. They did and they will. That's what they use mercenary companies for in South America, Africa and the Middle East. So now we hear about Verizon hiring Blackwater last month to help with the strike and it will just escalate.

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. Show "Matewan" and two things will happen....

...a.) if you don't have tenure, you'll be out of a job, and b.) the students know for whom to cheer. They're not that dumb. Oppression is something they know.

Viva lo sciopero!

[CrispyQ]

10. There is an entire anti-union culture that has been cultivated since Reagan.

Of course the investor & owner class signed onto this plan, but many of the working class did too. They failed to recognize is that fighting & supporting unions helps all workers, even if those workers not in a union. It may take a bit of time, but solidarity pays off.

[blindpig]

9. Who could imagine?

Shit, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[trayfoot]

11. This is why GREAT teachers

do not rely on textbooks, solely, to teach! Teachers who KNOW their subject area should be able to offset biased and inaccurate textbooks by teaching the TRUTH!