President Lincoln and the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota in 1862

[L Verge]

I suspect that Liz and Rob are expressing opinions drawn from their own experiences as students, so please don't taint the whole field of history teachers for the shortcomings of your educational system.

I might also add that I taught right outside Washington, D.C. during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. It was pretty hard not to discuss both sides of American history issues from exploration days to the present. And, I taught students from all ability levels -- children of tenant farmers on through high ranking military families (even the niece of General Westmoreland). History and current events of the day could be woven together for some very interesting discussions.

To me as a professional educator, the important thing to stress then and now were how many of the mistakes were driven by the forces and beliefs of any given era AND WERE THEN CORRECTED by succeeding generations. That is the best purpose of any education - religious or secular - that good things can come out of bad situations if a citizenry works on solutions together.

I guess WORK is the key word to me: Work to understand what caused things to happen; work for solutions; work for improvements instead of whining about what happened in the past; work for your income instead of expecting government handouts -- or waiting for the opportunity to loot your local Walmart.

I said I was going to regret posting about the Sioux warriors...! What I thought would be an interesting sidebar as to how they handled their fate is turning into another disgruntled love fest on wayward American behavior.