Wednesday Open Thread: Women's History Month
History is written by the winners. We see this time and time again in American history. As a former teacher, I was keenly aware that the stories our textbooks told were done in exactly this manner. The books would elevate larger-than-life figures and downplay their flaws. They would ooze patriotism and ignore the oppressed. They would make sweeping generalizations like "slavery was bad," and would then proceed to use euphemisms to describe the horrors of the practice. At a formative time in many a child's life, we as teachers were forced to sugarcoat and ignore the dark and disturbing parts of American history, while simultaneously making sure what we did teach didn't rock the boat too much by disrupting the status quo. In short, we were expected to enlighten the next generation by providing a censored version of our history, one where students left the class feeling informed but not inspired. And that is why women are so terribly underrepresented in the annals of Am...
