i'm bored so i looked at the America 250 teacher toolkit
it's all of two pages. okay. whatever.
apparently this was too exhausting to double check however:
there's a lot of focus on memorization, rather than creation. suggested for elementary:
why? why his poem? why yet another poem by a rich, dead, cishet white guy writing about another rich, dead, cishet white guy, a poem that, frankly, isn't that great? why only one?
why not The New Colossus, by emma lazarus? what would it mean to immigrant students, to have that be the poem held up to them?
why not Let America be America Again, by langston hughes, a beautiful, moving poem. it's not hyper-patriotic, I suppose. but so what? patriotism shouldn't mean "my country, right or wrong". it should mean the full quote, as given by carl schurz, himself an immigrant--he makes some very good remarks on the preceding page as well: "if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right". if we refuse to reckon with our wrongs, we won't have a better country--we'll have a spoilt, entitled child. what message will it send if we platform langston hughes -- a probably queer Black man? why not I, Too? why not?
why not I hear America singing by Walt Whitman, a gay (mayyybe bi???) man who dropped out of school at 11 to go to work?
why is only one voice allowed?
but not the fact that he owned slaves? not the fact that he claimed to decry slavery, but in fact added to the number of slaves he owned over time? not the fact that his "justification" for keeping slaves was that it was so convenient? not the fact that he didn't free his slaves upon his death?
the idea of songs isn't bad. protest songs could work. i did a unit on labor history that incorporated union songs.
but patriotic? what does that mean?
unquestioning? so awed by the guns that they refuse to see who it's shooting? sycophantic? chauvinistic?
what does that mean? a fake-nostalgia, rich-abled-cishet-white-dude's idealization of pseudohistory??
they also keep recommending you visit Great American Road Trip sites. To be clear, this is one of them:
also, it's weird and biased. like, I get it, you want diversity of places. but...there are other places you could list. like, you know what has more historical interest and a noah's ark connection? kennywood. it's one of two amuseument parks that are designated national historic landmarks. it has several rides that are the last of their kind left--including a "Noah's Ark" attraction from 1936.
to be clear, i don't think it should be highlighted either. there are other, much more deserving locations--in allegheny county alone, there's the Braddock Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie Library in the US; the Cathedral of Learning, the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere and the second-tallest in the world; Clayton, Henry Clay Frick's house and now a museum; the Fort Pitt Block House, one of the oldest European-built structures west of the Alleghenies; and Saint Anthony's Chapel, home to the largest collection of religious relics in the world outside of the Vatican, among others. none of those are listed.
(i was going to list something about the homestead strike, but the only thing from allegheny county they do have listed is the carrie blast furnaces in homestead, so.)
(i do -- in the sense of the people, in the sense of a deep gratitude that they let my ancestors in, combined with a rage that they did not let in others'. in the sense of the complicated love that exists despite what the country may have done. in the sense of love that leads to disappointment when they elect a fascist. in the sense of a complicated feeling that doesn't quite have a word, a tangle of emotions that, it can be argued, is love, just as it can be argued it's rage, sadness, gratitude, or something else entirely.)
(but other people might not.)
god that's dystopian. like what the fuck.
