I can’t recall it even being discussed in my APUSH class twenty fucking years ago BUT we did have an interesting class project for the post-Civil War era where the class was asked to choose how to make things better for industrial workers. We had two choices: unionization, or Taylorism (make them work harder and smarter). The vast majority of the class picked Taylorism. This was a class filled with white liberals, too, plus one Republican who kept his mouth shut. I was a liberal at the time but the results here really shocked me; two of my friends and I were the only ones who voted for unionization. The other students were mostly overachieving white women who have spent their lives pushing paper at do-nothing nonprofits as far as I know.
I was thinking recently how interesting it was that the only theory the class really had was that everything in America before the Civil War was leading up to the Civil War. But after the Civil War, there’s really no theory at all. It’s just a glorified recitation of important dates and names, basically.
I loved the class though and got A’s for both semesters, which was rare for me as a mediocre student. I thought the teacher was great. I remember him mentioning that he thought Jefferson was cool because he was a nerd 😬
I ran into him as an adult after I had spent years living overseas. When I told him about the universal health care system in [non-communist Asian country], he clearly just did not believe me. My family and I had used the hospitals there hundreds of times, it was always quick and fast and cheap and effective, and that’s the way it was and still is for tens of millions of people in that country, but this fact meant that his precious liberal heroes were lying to him about the impracticality of universal health care, so he just assumed that I was insane.
A year or two ago we argued on Facebook about how science cannot be apolitical (since nothing is apolitical) and haven’t spoken since.
I can’t recall it even being discussed in my APUSH class twenty fucking years ago BUT we did have an interesting class project for the post-Civil War era where the class was asked to choose how to make things better for industrial workers. We had two choices: unionization, or Taylorism (make them work harder and smarter). The vast majority of the class picked Taylorism. This was a class filled with white liberals, too, plus one Republican who kept his mouth shut. I was a liberal at the time but the results here really shocked me; two of my friends and I were the only ones who voted for unionization. The other students were mostly overachieving white women who have spent their lives pushing paper at do-nothing nonprofits as far as I know.
I was thinking recently how interesting it was that the only theory the class really had was that everything in America before the Civil War was leading up to the Civil War. But after the Civil War, there’s really no theory at all. It’s just a glorified recitation of important dates and names, basically.
I loved the class though and got A’s for both semesters, which was rare for me as a mediocre student. I thought the teacher was great. I remember him mentioning that he thought Jefferson was cool because he was a nerd 😬
I ran into him as an adult after I had spent years living overseas. When I told him about the universal health care system in [non-communist Asian country], he clearly just did not believe me. My family and I had used the hospitals there hundreds of times, it was always quick and fast and cheap and effective, and that’s the way it was and still is for tens of millions of people in that country, but this fact meant that his precious liberal heroes were lying to him about the impracticality of universal health care, so he just assumed that I was insane.
A year or two ago we argued on Facebook about how science cannot be apolitical (since nothing is apolitical) and haven’t spoken since.