Where I live in the US there is a movement to A) Prohibit phones from being used in schools B) use textbooks again instead of digital texts C) use handwriting and notebooks instead of Chromebooks for in-class note taking.
While this might help, and I agree with all these steps, I'm concerned that the root of the problem is simply that the online experience has rewired our kids. Not screens per se, but the feeling of a constantly moving social space which demands their attention.
I’d honestly argue—in 2026—it’s more important for Americans to understand black history today than the Vietnam war. The idiots who keep propelling Presidents into the Oval who repeat Vietnam’s mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran are folks with a terrible understanding of our racial history and way too much surface knowledge about big guns and materiel.
What currently constitutes these studies seems to be a mix of propaganda and bullshit. But that sort of underlines the point that we have an impoverished set of common facts.
I think it's probably pretty important to teach that the government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMDs, and that the history of the last half century has been the federal government constantly starting wars for no benefit to the American people, often under false pretenses.
While we're at it we can teach how the government conducted a biological attack on San Francisco to see what would happen if there were a biological attack on San Francisco, sold weapons to terrorists, let people's syphilis go untreated intentionally so they could see what happens (to be fair that falls under black history), conducted torture experiments on Americans (possibly accidentally creating the unabomber), was caught spying on all of us, and developed plans that they brought to the president to conduct false flag attacks on Americans to start another war. But they definitely wouldn't still do any of that. And the other things people say are crazy conspiracy theories.
bentt · · focus · HN ↗
While this might help, and I agree with all these steps, I'm concerned that the root of the problem is simply that the online experience has rewired our kids. Not screens per se, but the feeling of a constantly moving social space which demands their attention.
throw93038383 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
Understanding them makes you understand Hegseth, Trump and Iran war a lot better.
throw93038383 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
What currently constitutes these studies seems to be a mix of propaganda and bullshit. But that sort of underlines the point that we have an impoverished set of common facts.
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗
While we're at it we can teach how the government conducted a biological attack on San Francisco to see what would happen if there were a biological attack on San Francisco, sold weapons to terrorists, let people's syphilis go untreated intentionally so they could see what happens (to be fair that falls under black history), conducted torture experiments on Americans (possibly accidentally creating the unabomber), was caught spying on all of us, and developed plans that they brought to the president to conduct false flag attacks on Americans to start another war. But they definitely wouldn't still do any of that. And the other things people say are crazy conspiracy theories.