Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

Pepper

Pepper

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Remember that?

PragerU cartoon approved for use in Florida public schools suggests slavery isn’t always wrong, that being killed is worse​


Cartoon has Columbus tell children: "“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world, even amongst the people I just left,” he tells the children. “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”
https://www.stillmoretosay.com/p/prageru-cartoon-approved-for-use

C'mon. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
 

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I'm guessing the people who wrote the cartoon didn't entertain a third possibility: Leaving people where they were so they could live as they chose, rather than abducting and either enslaving or killing them?

And for the record, Christopher Columbus was far from a paragon of wisdom or virtue.
 
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I remember waaay back--sh*t I'm old :cautious: --in the 1960s, hearing about a wealthy, elderly, white woman living in the American South who was heard to say, "Well, who says slavery was all that bad anyway?!" and being so shocked that someone could think like that in "this day and age" and therefore didn't know if I believed she had really said that or not. Welp. A few years later, I overheard a friend's elderly, wealthy, white grandmother, who was from one of the southern states, say the same exact thing. I have just about given up on humans.
 
Dennis Prager has a talk radio show. He sounds arrogant and self righteous and I can't listen to him.

“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world, even amongst the people I just left,” he tells the children. “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

Overall, the statement is basically true, except the last sentence excuses it. I'm not making excuses, but maybe it all slipped past Florida's Board of Education and should be re-visited.
 
The article doesn't explain what age group or grade level this kind of presentation was targeted for.

As a way to discuss the differences in how society works NOW I think this part might be overlooked as having some value.

Quote from article text
"This prompts one of the children, Layla, to ask a logical question: “Good and bad are based on the time you live in?”

Columbus answers, “Some things are clearly bad, no matter when they happen,” without naming slavery as an example. “But for other things, before you judge, you must ask yourself what did society and culture at the time treat as no big deal.”

When I went to school the lesson plans didn't encourage discussion. What was written is what was taught. Thinking about how life has changed as time passes just wasn't done.
 
I don't know much about this topic so I looked for actual info from a known source and ran across this from one of the authors of the curriculum.

Black curriculum co-author defends slavery wording in new Florida guidelines​


Nearly all sources about this are political but the man in the video above is one of the authors, William B. Allen.

The following link has the qualifications for those who served on the workgroup that wrote the curriculum. – Call for African American History Standards Workgroup Members

The national outrage exploded mostly over a benchmark included in a lesson about the kinds of labor enslaved people were forced into, and that “slaves developed skills from which they could personally benefit,”

If that statement is the problem I think there's more than one way to look at it. You could think it's a terrible thing to say as people claim in the news or you could think how you might feel if you were a freed slave. If you didn't have a skill that you could use to earn a living how would you survive? To me that's not excusing slavery, it's simply stating a fact. People were able to move into a free life because they had skills.

At any rate, I'm not going to argue with Dr. William B. Allen. He seems to be a knowledgable honest man to me.
 
Remember owning slaves in this country lasted many years…about 260. So learning a trade 100 years before emancipation probably increased your overall resale value…but hardly much else. It is documented that SOME slave owners allowed their slaves to outsource their skills and earn money for their owners. SOME owners allowed them to keep some of the monies. While slavery might be preferable to some sorts of death it probably depended upon how you might die and whose slave you might become. Plus…as a slave you did not get to choose.
 
Muskrat said:
Remember owning slaves in this country lasted many years…about 260. So learning a trade 100 years before emancipation probably increased your overall resale value…but hardly much else. It is documented that SOME slave owners allowed their slaves to outsource their skills and earn money for their owners. SOME owners allowed them to keep some of the monies. While slavery might be preferable to some sorts of death it probably depended upon how you might die and whose slave you might become. Plus…as a slave you did not get to choose.
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I wouldn't try to make the case that slavery is preferable to death. I'm not at all sure that is true.

It's too bad that so many don't value freedom today and are so ready to give it up but that's a different discussion for a different venue.
 
Muskrat said:
@Myrtle I did not say it was…but depending upon the type of death and where you might choose it. Columbus himself cut the hands off natives that did not please him with gold…
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True, you did not. I was reacting to the choice.

So many horrible things happened before the times we live in and we tend to judge them by today's standards. I am not up to date on what Columbus may have done and I would have to do a lot of reading to put it into the perspective of his time. I will settle for saying it is not happening now because we are a better people now. I will celebrate human progress.
 
This is an interesting topic. I see nothing wrong with debating issues like slavery in the classroom, at the right age. However I do think that having an authoritative character say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem." is over the top and wrong.

In the 8th grade in civics class we debated slavery. One team was assigned to argue against, and one in favor. I ended up on the in favor team. I took my job seriously, found all of the things I could in defense of slavery. Guess I went in better prepared than the antis, according to the teacher I won, on points anyway.

When it was all over he looked at me and asked "do you really believe slavery was a good thing?". Took me by surprise and after thinking for a minute I had to say no, its never right for one person to own another. At that point in life I had been raised in the bible belt conservative south, it was a kind of surprise and realization to me. I have not really given slavery much thought before that and had largely bought into the whole myth of the glorious confederacy. Participating in that debate is one of the few political lessons learned I can remember from Jr High. It stuck with me, what I learned is that although there may be what sound like good arguments in favor of something that doesn't make it right.

That's my experience, however I think it is very different from being taught something like what this lesson appears to me to have taught. I believe getting kids to think and discuss will lead most of them to the right answers, and be much more memorable than being told.

It is true that in human history slavery has been more the norm and that our opposition to it is more the exception. I think teaching that and getting kids talking about it would be a good thing. However the article says this cartoon was for elementary school kids, I think that is too young for an issue this complex. I can't see saying anything that might sound positive about slavery in elementary school... no more than human sacrifice...
 
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Against this. We must be so careful what impressions are introduced in children's minds.
1. I instills a fear of death as a bad thing. Death is not a bad thing. View death from a higher perspective,
not from this earthly life.
FEAR IS A BAD THING.
2. It promotes that slavery, confinement, not being free as a much better way to live.
This indoctrinates the child into following whatever force wants to control him, (even subconsciously)
and it's better to submit and comply than to fight for freedom.
This is not the way of Americans. We fight (and maybe die) for freedom and for the Constitution.
3. Why is Columbus still in the history books when it's known Leif Erikson, Norse Viking, first settled in America from overseas?.

4. By the way, Slavery existed about 250 years in America but 180 of these years we were part of Great Britain,
(72% of those years). We were only self -ruled for about 70 years. (to 1873, "the emancipation Proclamation")
5. I like that @Myrtle brought up that those were different eras with different standards, different values, a whole different society,
and hopefully, we have grown as a species since then.
 
Gaer said:
Slavery existed about 250 years in America but 180 of these years we were part of Great Britain,
(72% of those years). We were only self -ruled for about 70 years. (to 1873, "the emancipation Proclamation")
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Actually longer than that, for example, from Wikipedia:

Many of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war. Their targets often included members of the Coast Salish groups. Among some tribes about a quarter of the population were slaves. One slave narrative was composed by an Englishman, John R. Jewitt, who had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802; his memoir provides a detailed look at life as a slave, and explains that among his slavemasters, the main tribal chief had 50 slaves and his deputies up to a dozen each.

Other slave-owning societies and tribes of the New World included the Tehuelche of Patagonia, the Kalinago of Dominica, the Tupinambá of Brazil, and the Pawnee of the Great Plains.

After humans began living in cities, civilization, slavery was all too often far behind.
 
Alligatorob said:
Actually longer than that, for example, from Wikipedia:

Many of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war. Their targets often included members of the Coast Salish groups. Among some tribes about a quarter of the population were slaves. One slave narrative was composed by an Englishman, John R. Jewitt, who had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802; his memoir provides a detailed look at life as a slave, and explains that among his slavemasters, the main tribal chief had 50 slaves and his deputies up to a dozen each.

Other slave-owning societies and tribes of the New World included the Tehuelche of Patagonia, the Kalinago of Dominica, the Tupinambá of Brazil, and the Pawnee of the Great Plains.

After humans began living in cities, civilization, slavery was all too often far behind.
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Interesting. Thanks.
 
This curriculum seems to acknowledge, if briefly, that slavery was a world-wide atrocity, not just an American atrocity (and it's still practiced in some places). But it would be even better if kids learned about the lives people were taken from when they were forced into slavery; that they were snatched from families who depended on them, from their homes, their livelihoods and their cultures.

When you just keep referring to slaves as slaves, you're not characterizing them as individuals...just normal, everyday people. So, the thing that's still missing is relatability and empathy.
 
officerripley said:
Indeed. That's why, as frustrated as I sometimes get with technology, I think if it's as I suspect a choice between technology and slavery, I'd rather have technology.
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To live in our relatively luxurious style we need someone or something doing a lot of the work. For thousands of years it was all too often slaves. Today, for us, it's technology. Without much of our modern technology doing work for us slavery would probably still be common.

Doesn't justify teaching what @Pepper pointed out.
 
Murrmurr said:
This curriculum seems to acknowledge, if briefly, that slavery was a world-wide atrocity, not just an American atrocity (and it's still practiced in some places). But it would be even better if kids learned about the lives people were taken from when they were forced into slavery; that they were snatched from families who depended on them, from their homes, their livelihoods and their cultures.

When you just keep referring to slaves as slaves, you're not characterizing them as individuals...just normal, everyday people. So, the thing that's still missing is relatability and empathy.
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Did you watch the video? Dr. Allen refers to telling the stories of the slaves the way they told them, not to fit today's expectations. That seems important to me too. Of course there are no videos or even written records of those stories. They were passed down orally for the most part. There has to me much more in this curriculum than the cherry-picked half sentence used for political gain. I would like to see more.

Gaer said:
4. By the way, Slavery existed about 250 years in America but 180 of these years we were part of Great Britain,
(72% of those years). We were only self -ruled for about 70 years. (to 1873, "the emancipation Proclamation")
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This is an important point. Slavery in America started under British rule and ended under American rule. America is not the only place where slavery began and existed under British rule.

Information below is from a UK source:
Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade officially began, with royal approval, in 1663. In less than 150 years, Britain was responsible for transporting millions of enslaved Africans to colonies in the Americas, where men, women and children were forced to work on plantations and denied basic rights. This inhumane system led to the emergence of racist ideas and pseudoscience that were used to justify it.

Towards the end of the 18th century, a movement emerged calling for an end to the slave trade and, later, slavery itself. Abolitionism was one of the most successful reform movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was also one of the most protracted. It took 20 years to abolish Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and a further 26 years to abolish British colonial slavery in the Caribbean.

https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-...satlantic,plantations and denied basic rights.


A lot of Americans died in our Civil War.

Civil War Facts​

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-facts
 
Myrtle said:
Did you watch the video? Dr. Allen refers to telling the stories of the slaves the way they told them, not to fit today's expectations. That seems important to me too. Of course there are no videos or even written records of those stories. They were passed down orally for the most part. There has to me much more in this curriculum than the cherry-picked half sentence used for political gain. I would like to see more.
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I did. It's only part of the interview. Maybe he said more about the people's live before slavery in the full interview.

I heard where he said "the way they told it," but wasn't he talking about the way they told about their lives as slaves?

In my opinion, building a curriculum around this would be far more impactful :

 
Murrmurr said:
I heard where he said "the way they told it," but wasn't he talking about the way they told about their lives as slaves?
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Yes, I replied to what I thought you said instead of what you said. Sorry.

Are you a fan of Thomas Sowell's columns as well as his book?
 

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