Forgetting

There were recent debates in parts of the United States over school textbooks spending time on detailing the atrocities dealt to the Native Americans, the history of slavery and other negative parts of history.  Some people claim that it degrades students' perception of the grandness of the U.S. history.  But not dealing with the details allows for the forgetting and even doctoring of important historical events.  We have rather vocal holocaust deniers, people who want to place more blame on the Native Americans than deserved and those who want to lessen the negative perception of slavery.  In addition to people not realizing how bad some things were, lack of attention to teaching the details of humanity's past bad behavior along with the good aids people who want to convince others that certain things did not happen or were not as bad as was previously indicated.  I was amazed to hear a politician claim that slavery was not as bad as it has been portrayed and that the majority of slaves had comfortable lives.  This politician was from one of the same areas where the debates about teaching the negative aspects of US history are occurring.

That being said, I would like to comment that it would be good to see more developmental history alongside the tendency to emphasize war in some world histories.