Today, many Americans are more likely to shrug at Jefferson’s liberalism than revere it. And FDR’s worshipful invocation of it will strike some people as blinkered. What about the interned Japanese-Americans, or the Jews turned away on the passenger ship St. Louis? We, too, like to think that our generation can see Jefferson in ways that intervening generations couldn’t—but for us, it’s his slaveholding and long relationship with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, whose importance we are able to recognize.
One can do this with any historical figure. Sure Lincoln freed the slaves, but what was his stance on Women's suffrage? Wanna talk about some of the things Gandhi thought? How 'bout Woodrow Wilson?
Once I was teaching about Margaret Thatcher. One of the assignments for that unit is for students to go home and look up people who hate Margaret Thatcher. Someone breathlessly exclaimed, 'But she was anti-gay rights!'
I replied, 'Honey, it was 1985. We were all anti-gay rights.'
As I try to explain to students, the past is another country, they do things differently there. More importantly, one day your grand kids will want to know why you thought something that seemed perfectly reasonable in 2000, but in 2060 makes you a monster.
Go ahead, try it.
Why doesn't this generation of students understand that. Who are these 'social studies' teachers that didn't get this lesson across to them?
The education system has failed.
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