On Truth vs Ideology in History

From the History According to Bob Questions and Answers 77 episode,

A letter that Professor Bob, an Adjunct Professor of History at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City, Missouri, received from a High School history teacher in Queensland, Australia:

"'A problem which I found plagues everything I do as a history teacher.

One of the reasons I love your podcast so much is because you focus on investigating historical truth and analysing the causes and consequences of events in history.

I find, however, that in my classes and in my dealings with other teachers, this approach has been lost.

Everywhere I look, so-called 'history teachers' are instead teaching cultural or social justice studies. All content and context has been stripped out of the curriculum and replaced with simplistic dogmas and injustice-obsessed theories'...

When I first came into the district... there was no required Western Civ. And, they only required half of American History...

At college, I much prefer a social issue American History/World History text, because I can talk about these topics. I can assign the students to read the social issues. They'll then raise the social question, and I can put it into context."

[Addendum: Interesting comment on the Singapore Humanism Meetup list:

"I'm from Belgium... When I was a history teacher connecting moral issues in history lessons were even forbidden and could get you expelled as a teacher (which is a good thing of course) For example, when you talked about pharaos in ancient Egypt and you asked the pupils "Do you think that's ok that the pharoah had more than 1 wife?" , you could be expelled for that."]


Also:

"'What happened after the [American Civil] War? Why were the African-Americans so badly treated?'...

The mistake in American History is to believe that the North and the Abolitionists were in favour of Equal Rights for the former slaves.

They saw Slavery as a bad issue; they didn't want them to be citizens, any more than the States wanted the Indians to be citizens of their states. So you have to separate that - there's a difference between Freedom and Equality. And that's part of that.


[Addendum: This post has been updated to include information on Professor Bob. Previously it might've given the impression that he was a teacher in Queensland, Australia]