• CaliforniaSpectre [he/him, comrade/them]
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I was actually extremely lucky with my California public high school. Mine was the first year where they had exchanged the old China bad unit (tiananmen/Tibet) for a unit on the coup against Allende, CIA orchestration, and specifically how monstrous Pinochet really was. We learned a lot about the arpillerista movement and their resistance too.

    My liberal-brained friends and I would actually argue with our teachers sometimes about how bad the US was framed in all our lesson plans, and their argument was "even if we are overdoing US bad (they really weren't), you are never going to hear these perspectives or about this history for the rest of your life if you don't hear them now". They were right, and thankfully those friends and I are pretty much all Communists now (at least as much as relatively privileged Americans can be). That was just sophomore year of high school, then junior year was AP US history back to American exceptionalist narratives and all. The school was special so changes like this give me some hope, but I heard it rather lost its way after I left.

    Also our Spanish teacher would just put on motorcycle diaries during class and give you extra credit if you said the US was bad and Che good on tests. People made fun of her but she was fucking goaded.