History lessons
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| Photo: Yalonda M. James |
A letter to the editor in last week's SF Chronicle:
The mural at George Washington High School is not only a work of art, but potentially a great teaching tool. The controversy it generates is proof of its merit.
Instead of covering it up, they should print a manual discussing the warts in our history it illustrates and incorporate it into a civics or history class.
Michael Hanley
Berkeley
Rob's comment:
Yes! As a history major in college, I learned as much from the art history courses I took as I did from the rest of the history curriculum.
It's a shame that art history isn't usually offered in high school: First semester, cave paintings and prehistoric art to the Renaissance. Second semester, Renaissance to abstract expressionism and postmodernism.
posted by Rob Anderson @ 1:18 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
In 1945 when Eisenhower viewed his first concentration camp he made all the villagers there march by the corpses and soon-to-be corpses so they could never claim they did not know what was going on. And he told the liberating American troops to take as many photographs as they could because he knew someday people would deny this ever happened and that there needed to be a record to the contrary.
I went to Washington and any proposal to cover it is bullshit! WTF? First it is an incredible work of art, even as a dumb high school student i was impressed by it and looked at it everyday, and i knew what it was about and the slam to native americans. Hell we knew it as HS students. Honestly this kind of reminds me of the USSR and China when they controlled all content of all arts!
Eisenhower, an old-fashioned Republican with a conscience, had this to say about some US soldiers:
"During the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower knew that most men who were 'separated from their units,' in official jargon, were in fact trying to desert. He was vexed that American soldiers in jail for petty infractions almost always declined a pardon if it meant going to the front."
As the American army liberated Europe in the winter of 1944-45, Eisenhower was so disturbed by reports that American GIs had raped local women that 'at one point,' wrote military historian Mark Perry, he "thought the only solution was to line up the perpetrators and mow them down."
Of course he didn't do that, but it's a good thought. He also had some good advice for JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
For Anonymous, I recommend a more nuanced view of how the German people behaved during World War II: The Responsibility of Peoples.
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