Question for parents with high school age kids:

[Brigid]

What is in your son or daughter's history books about the history of the labor movement in this country? Anything about the Knights of Labor or the Molly Maguires? Blair Mountain? The steel strikes of the '50's? Harlan County, KY?

Just curious; I didn't learn about most of these things until later, piecemeal. I wonder if things have improved.

[Sherman A1]

1. A good question to be asked and answered

I have no school age children, so I cannot contribute beyond a K&R, but I will gladly do that much. :kick: And because I believe this "smiley" is simply not used often enough I will add.....
:donut:

[denbot]

2. I have 1 just graduated, and 1 just starting highschool..

I'll ask her and relay her answer to you.

[sakabatou]

3. I think I remember about the steel strikes

But not the others. It's been a while.

[TexasTowelie]

4. I have a question.

I went to school and live in Texas, what's a union? :sarcasm:

[eilen]

5. My boy is in 10th grade

and their class is called Global Studies.

No text has come home. Plus I think it is a study of other countries and cultures.

[Fresh_Start]

6. my junior's text book

talk about knights of labor, steel strikes, triangle shirtwaist company, labor movement. Its the beginning of the school year so he's made it from preColumbian times to revolution war so far so can't tell anymore yet because he's not actually studied that part yet. His is AP USA history so its more indepth than average.

[zazen]

7. at my daughter's charter high school they read Howard Zinn

I do at least know that the standard course of study for NC now includes a lot more focus on Latin America and Africa. We NEVER studied that in K-12. Everything was so eurocentric.

I'm not happy that the economics part of the standard course of study is utterly neoliberal economics. That's another place where labor could be discussed, but they're just "human capital" from the neoliberal perspective.

[Zephie]

8. When I was in high school in 2007,

I know we had it all in our textbooks but what we covered did not include those sections despite of being an honors Am. Hist course. However the teacher was very conservative and that may have been her decision and not true of the rest of the course work the other social studies teachers gave.

Edit for Android phone autocorrect

[xmas74]

9. I remember learning some of it back in junior high

but I grew up in a labor-friendly area. By the time I started high school in a different state there was no further discussion of anything relating to labor.

A friend has said that her son, who graduated from high school last year, was only taught that unions basically ruined the country. She's having a hell of a time teaching him differently.