politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
It's functionally impossible to assign whole books to middle schoolers. And don't confuse what you learn in primary education with real study.
First of all, middle schoolers read whole books all the time. You clearly don't have any kids who are or have been through middle school. Secondly, there's also a thing called high school and they study WW2 during it.
Thirdly, this was what you said initially:
You didn't say anything about real study. You just said we should be reading Mein Kampf within historical context. So I'm now confused as to why you don't think school children should be reading Mein Kampf.
History books are secondary sources. Which are sufficient for the average person studying history. Perhaps even preferable, since they are written with historical context already supplied, although you do also get the inherent bias of the author.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for primary sources like Mein Kampf. Primary sources are the only thing that tells scholars what was happening in history at any given time, and history books can't be written without scholars studying primary sources. So should Mein Kampf be required reading for middle schoolers? Of course not, no one is saying that. But it may absolutely be required for, say, a graduate level course in WWII history.
Blacklisting or stigmatizing a text serves no one except those that want others to remain ignorant.
What bias could there be about Hitler? That he was a bad guy? Are you saying it's wrong to be biased against Hitler?
Historians need to read the primary sources. Like a lot of primary sources. So many primary sources.
But unless you're an historian writing a paper then it's not all that useful. Because most people don't have the time to read so many primary sources to really understand what was happening in a given time period. It's best to read the summary from historians that can spend many years studying just that one narrow time period. It's feasible for them to read a broad selection of primary source from that time period. It's not feasible for most people to do that.
If you're picking just a few primary sources here and there and thinking you understand what was happening you're going to have view of history that's biased by the very small selection of primary sources that you've read. Remember that in the past people lied just as often as they do now. If you pick a few primary sources, how do you know if the ones you selected aren't just straight up lying?
No one is talking about blacklisting anything, but are you really suggesting there is no stigma to Mein Kampf? Really?