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Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

These deficiencies in Japanese education are self-reinforcing; people who are unaware of these things will not pressure the state to include them in the curriculum. Of course, I'm sure SK doesn't talk much about their greatest moral embarrassments.

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In USA public schools the same history course is given ten grades in a row. Somehow it neglects to include anything about Wounded Knee, USA actions in Philippines, Mosaddegh coup, COINTELPRO, School of the Americas, etc.

Definitely didn't cover COINTELPRO but the Philippines and Wounded Knee were definitely covered. We rarely got past 1960 so most of the more recent US actions were uncovered.

Honestly, I'm jealous. For so much of my life I was deeply skeptical of history as a field of study. It seemed arbitrary and useless. It turned out that what I'd seen of the subject was a bogus selective narrative carefully constructed to make me ignore the fact that the polity to which I am subject has been at war against non-white people for centuries. I probably should have been smart enough to figure this out earlier, but I wasn't. I wish that rather than constituting a complete waste of time, public school history classes could have better acquainted me with the world as it really is. Although, I wonder if that younger me would even have cared? The war media has a strong effect on inquisitive young minds. So much trivial bullshit to learn!

Don't worry, its going hard the other direction, based on what the average school teacher says who's in their 20s and 30s.

I wish that were true. If it were, one would expect to see some results outside the classroom. Are we fighting fewer stupid wars? I don't think we can say that yet.

It's only happened in the past 5-10 years, so all the people who have received a very leftist narrative of history are children right now.

Similarly, we don't teach about the Canadian Indian residential school system in high school, and non-native Canadians have a difficult time empathizing with the state of reserves. Does any country do a good job of this?

Well they sure teach it now, although not when I was in school.

I'm not sure what your point is. We should accept atrocities because everyone is doing it?

I'm surprised people here love uniqlo so much. They use Uygher slave labor.

Germany does a good job of owning their past it seems like.

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