Your history was way ahead of what we were taught. I never saw the word Zionism until well into adulthood. But then, I didn’t learn of concentration camps for Japanese Americans on the west coast until my late ‘30’s, and then it came from a popular novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars”. I asked my mother who lived through WWII if she’d known about it. Living in rural NE she’d been completely unaware. The control over the narrative was absolute. They lost that control thanks to independent journalism. I did used to wonder how in the past there seemed to be no disagreement on the narrative, just straightforward facts, apparently the “truth”. I was in HS during the Vietnam War and there was so much upheaval I couldn’t understand how we’d lost all that certainty of the past. My hometown newspaper even explained how Kent State was necessary because of the threat to the National Guard. The only time we had discussions about anything was my senior year in a sociology class. The vice principal started sitting in on our classes, interrupting to tell stories of his wounds in WWII. Needless to say, the teacher was only there for one year. He didn’t tell us what to think , only provided the sole space for us to discuss and form our own thoughts. That was certainly not to be tolerated.
Your history was way ahead of what we were taught. I never saw the word Zionism until well into adulthood. But then, I didn’t learn of concentration camps for Japanese Americans on the west coast until my late ‘30’s, and then it came from a popular novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars”. I asked my mother who lived through WWII if she’d known about it. Living in rural NE she’d been completely unaware. The control over the narrative was absolute. They lost that control thanks to independent journalism. I did used to wonder how in the past there seemed to be no disagreement on the narrative, just straightforward facts, apparently the “truth”. I was in HS during the Vietnam War and there was so much upheaval I couldn’t understand how we’d lost all that certainty of the past. My hometown newspaper even explained how Kent State was necessary because of the threat to the National Guard. The only time we had discussions about anything was my senior year in a sociology class. The vice principal started sitting in on our classes, interrupting to tell stories of his wounds in WWII. Needless to say, the teacher was only there for one year. He didn’t tell us what to think , only provided the sole space for us to discuss and form our own thoughts. That was certainly not to be tolerated.