2. Write a Secondary Response (SP)

Respond thoughtfully to a fellow student’s original post on the OPPOSITE document or question your did your OP on.  Simply writing “I agree” without any discussion will get you no points on this part. Please do not respond to a original post that has more than 2 secondary responses already. If you respond to the an OP that addresses the same document or question from you wrote your original post on you will only receive half credit at most.  About one robust paragraph.  (5 points)

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3. Write a Tertiary Response (TP)

This is a free post.  You can thoughtfully respond to one of the SPs on your own or any other OP or write a TP on any post in the forum. (5 points)

Hi! I totally agree with your examination of relationships between the biased thinking or any negative outlooks which come from society and what Takaki calls “the master narrative of American history”. They are both involved wrong history that is told by forceful people naturally. It is scary that people easily start arguments over their ethnicity or race. This can cause racial discrimination as well as produce prejudices toward people or countries. Also, it is so true that neither can we choose skin color, first language, nor nationality.

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I believe that America is a place where freedom of expression or anything can be accepted. America isn’t just a specific place for a certain type of race because we all know that the creators of this “new” land became America because they were also immigrants. Anyone can be an American is just has to be decided by their personal preferences on being seen as an American or not. Takaki talks about the type of race and how people see Americans as “white” and Americans from another race as “others”. Mainly people don’t expect certain people of different races to be seen and categorize as Americans. it’s mainly seen as something extortionary when someone of ethnicity is seen talking proper English and as a fellow Hispanic seen as an outsider in American when I was born and race here still get categorized by both sides. America was settled by many different races and have clashed and have become mixed.

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Extra Credit:

Read the following two articles from the Atlantic on the issue of teaching American history:

The Atlantic, The Problem with History Classes

The Atlantic, Who Should Decide how Students Learn about America’s Past?

Then reply to this point and respond to the article incorporating the following questions.

1. What has your experience been with American history as taught in American high schools? Have you noticed the issue the article is addressing? (For example, the controversy over McGraw-Hill history textbooks referring to kidnapped African slaves as “immigrants” and “workers” or the “lionizing” of the Founding Fathers vs. the critical

2. How is historiography different from history? Consider especially these two quotes:

“Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. This teaching pretends that there is a uniform collective story, which is akin to saying everyone remembers events the same. Yet, history is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be “official” by scholars on high. It is a collection of historians exchanging different, often conflicting analyses. And rather than vainly seeking to transcend the inevitable clash of memories, American students would be better served by descending into the bog of conflict and learning the many “histories” that compose the American national story.”

“Americans want to be descendants of a noble people, explained David Blight , a U.S.-history professor and the director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Americans want to be the people who emancipated the slaves—not the people who enslaved them. “But history’s job isn’t to make people feel happy about themselves or their culture,” he said.”

3. What are your thoughts going forward? Who SHOULD decide who teaches Americans history?

You may answer all three questions together in a single robust paragraph. Please make sure you REPLY TO THIS THREAD and don’t start your own.  Your points will NOT be added to your Threaded Discussion grade but rather added to the Extra Credit score.  I usually hide Easter eggs on Wednesdays.  You have until the close of the Threaded Discussion to respond (Sundays at noon).