Sperging about the education of WW1 and WW2 in school, mind you, this was over 40 years ago, but there is something interesting.
Prior to 1979 even though my family moved around a lot, I got a pretty rounded education on WW1 and WW2. One of the most vivid ways the teacher showed us how WW1 happened is she gave us all slips of paper. She had us roll a die three times. Once, we pulled white slips, those were people in the class we were neutral to. Then we pulled red, those were people in the class we didn't trust and might not like (You could get the same name in red or blue interestingly enough). Then you pull the number of blue ones.
Now, she took us outside, had groups of us be at the jungle gym, another group at the slides, another group at the hopscotch and said: OK, Kimmy was assassinated by Bobby. Who's friends with Kimmy? OK, who's friends with Bobby.
And the whole class devolved into a shitshow.
Then we learned about how it bogged down, how technology shifts created the stalemate as tactics and strategy didn't catch up. Then we learned, as elementary school kids, that it left everything destroyed in Europe (the slides, hopscotch, and jungle gym) while the US, largely Africa, Indochina, China, and Japan (the swings, teeter totter, ect) were all fine.
Then we learned about how the economy was destroyed. She taught this by handing out monopoly money and cranking the price of bread until we were handing out multiple $100 for a loaf of bread.
She asked if someone came up and said "You baby sister gets to live, your mommy and daddy can have food, and your house will be warm and the roof fixed, just sign my petition!" if we would.
Well... duh.
Oops, my class elected Hitler to power.
Then we learned more. How the US was providing war material, how Japan and China were wrestling. We watched a few old black and white movies. Some old guys came into class and talked. One who served in Africa, one in Europe, one in the Pacific, one who worked at home driving trucks coast to coast to move valuable supplies. Then how hundreds of thousands of American troops would have died taking Japan (The Purple Heart medals printed for the amphibious landing of Japan are still given out to this fucking day) and millions of Japanese would have died. How Japan's war crimes were ignored in order to provide the US a Far East ally and base to offset the rapidly growing Soviet Union and Communist China, how Nazi scientists then took part in the Green Revolution and NASA.
We got variants. Discussion of the colonization of America by the European powers, the colonization of Africa, the stripping of South America, on and on, till the Revolutionary War where we learn it was close because some generals tried to fight the British on their own terms. We read Johnny Tremain and stuff like that. I first read that particular book in 3rd Grade and we discussed it in class.
We had problems with New Math and Esperanto and the Metric System, but that was the 70's, baby.
Then... the early 80's happened. Holy shit.
By the mid-80's it was all "MUH JOOZ!" and reading diary of a heeb, Hitler was evil and all germans were evil for summoning him from Hell to punish the Joice, and on and on.
So, what happened?
The establishment of the Department of Education. It immediately shifted focus from actually learning about history (The Code of Hammurabi, Roman Laws, Chinese Dynasties, Japanese Dynasties because these were all tied to World War 2 and the Korean War and the recent Vietnam War) so we could understand how we had been lucky enough to have been born in America at the time we were over to focusing entirely on MUH JOOZ! MUH EBIL GERMANS! MUH MISUNDERSTOOD COMMIES!
The Department of Education raped 40 years worth the education.
Fucking prove me wrong.
Education suddenly shifted focus.
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