Current Events > What did your HS teachers say about Vietnam/Korean War?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was talking to others about it recently and at least for Americans, a lot of teachers kinda gloss over how America majorly fucked up and lost those "wars".

My HS teacher didn't mince words about the L we took and how much of the population was anti-war. He was a cool guy

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They always ran out of time and we only got to world war II by the end of the school year

I think everything after WW2 (or maybe the Korean War?) was covered in another class that was optional. Well, to satisfy the credit requirements for graduation you had to take some sort of politics class and we had a few choices for that - so I took current events >_>.

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Can't say that I remember. It's been almost 20 years since I graduated high school.

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Almost every history class of mine did a speedrun from WW2 to W Bush.

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It wasn't a required topic

Pretty much just "we lost"

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is it true in America they try to teach kids the 2 abombs were justified and omit the fact that truman was a documented racist?

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nada.

ww1 and ww2 were covered well cause i can still recall tests about them. the cold war stuff was glossed over to "ya those happened" but cant say i remember what they taught. i know about vietnam and korea because i researched it in college for a project and a paper oh and a presentation

mind that i was in an all boys HS in mid 90s

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We had a substitute with some major ptsd who served in Vietnam. We were little shits back in the day and would always slam our books on the floor or the desk.

Looking back.....we were fucked up.

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ModLogic posted...

is it true in America they try to teach kids the 2 abombs were justified and omit the fact that truman was a documented racist?

The thing is, every state has its own criteria (and it might even vary somewhat by school district, too). So maybe in some states they do that.

In my state they didn't really try to justify it from what I remember.

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What makes the Korean War not a draw?

Korea is split at the 38th parallel, North Korea takes over almost all of the Korean peninsula, South Korea pushes back almost all the way back to the north of the peninsula, North Korea pushes back and they basically push each other back and forth until the war ends and the DMZ is created.
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Complete_Idi0t posted...

They always ran out of time and we only got to world war II by the end of the school year

Same. I had maybe one or two classes that had the time to cover it, and even then it was truncated and usually glossed as "part of the Cold War."

I think it didn't help that the issues were political and polarizing by nature. Sure, you could argue that everything is a matter of political perspective, but most Americans tend not to take issue with World War II because the forces involved were overtly destructive, and the casus belli involved were much more just on our end and World War I is so divorced from the politics of today that no one really cares that we were involved to begin with, never mind if anyone has a hot take on the issue.

Korea and Vietnam weren't declared wars, and there are people who either had parents or loved ones that had their lives chewed up by those conflicts. I think we can broach the subjects better now, but when I was in school it still felt like there were some chips on shoulders and walking on egg shells.

We jump from WWII to the Cold War. Learn nothing about Korean War, and only a bit about Vietnam since my teacher was a Vietnam vet.

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I don't remember tbh. I graduated high school 15 years ago.

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Despite "winning", Vietnam got ass fucked pretty hard, and some still feel the effects to this day.

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ModLogic posted...

is it true in America they try to teach kids the 2 abombs were justified and omit the fact that truman was a documented racist?

Hexenherz posted...

The thing is, every state has its own criteria (and it might even vary somewhat by school district, too). So maybe in some states they do that.

In my state they didn't really try to justify it from what I remember.

Honestly I can't remember my classes going too in depth into the lives of most American statesmen, outside of the American Revolution and American Civil War. I think part of that is because for a high school level class there just isn't enough time or leeway on the subject to really explore that.

Never learned about it there, it is taboo I think because the US lost.

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The lessons were more numbers based. The North lost this, the South lost this, the US lost that, the French... that sort of thing. There really wasnt much talk about which side was right, just that the end result was the US efforts became very unpopular. I did not have high school teachers who were all that interested in adding in their own unsolicited opinions. College was a different matter.

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My school basically went back and forth between the early stages of the US up to the Civil War and then basically skipped straight to WW2.

These were pretty much the only two units they ever taught and if you wanted to learn other stuff, then it was on you.

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My public schooling was 99%

-Columbus
-American Revolution
-Civil War
-Industrial Revolution
-World War 1
-World War 2

and this was their playlist for the entire K-12.

except during February, when we were taught about Martin Luther King Jr, who is apparently the only Black civil rights activist who ever existed.

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I didn't know the Vietnamese and Koreans fought each other.

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