Friday, May 12, 2006

Sexual history

I'm a product of public schools here in California. Good public schools, actually. I'm just glad that I got out before everything went batshit crazy.
California is considering a change to the way it teaches history.

The state already requires mentions of the historical roles of women, African-Americans and Asians.

Today the Democratic-controlled state Senate approved a bill that would require social science textbooks to note the contributions homosexuals have made to history. It's apparently the first attempt to pass a law of this kind in the country, and of course it has sparked a furor.
You know, it's nice to be recognized for your achievements, and it's also nice to see people who you identify with recognized for the good things they've done, but come on! Do we really need to teach kids about the sexual proclicvities of historical figures? Where do you draw the line? What happens when the S & M crowd wants to be represented in the history books? Or NAMBLA?

I'm not attempting to be frivolous with those questions, either. When you start down this road with identity politics, I really don't see an end to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, dude-
We started down that road many years ago.
All the whining about euro-centric, patriarchical, sexist, blah efin blahbidy blah history and lit studies.
To be honest, it has always struck me as stalinist. Still does.
We're coming to an age where history will be written by those best wired to the media, not by true historians.
I know this, Goldstein knows it. I think you know it too.
For the truth to survive, we're going to have to depend more and more on oral history, because the knuckleheads running the media and academia value the dough and the approval of their fellow knuckleheads over their disciplines and the truth.