#i didnt take home ec because I was in AVID

[aisarete]

That is true, but also there are many things in many places that truly were never taught. I never learned any basic accounting or financial literacy in school. The only class that covered it even a little was Home Ec, which I did not take. There's lots of oversight like that, and the oversights vary from district to district.

That's not even talking about censorship! I have a lot of respect for my history teacher who closed the door and shut the blinds and told us for the next few weeks we were going to be learning about a variety of things that happened in America, such as the Trail of Tears and the Mexican-American War. The school didn't want it to be taught, and he could get in trouble, but he thought it was important for us to know.

He told us we could choose not to learn and he would move on; or we could promise not to talk about it at school and tell anyone who asked we were doing a unit on some other part of American history, I don't remember which. We voted and wanted to learn what he wanted to teach, mostly because we were rebellious teens and it sounded more interesting at the time.

He warned us not to check out books on the topics we discussed from the school library, either, because if too many kids were reading the same things from the same class, it would come down on him. And he kept all of his presentations of a personal laptop he hooked up to the projector, and kept a full lecture on the whiteboard behind the screen so if anyone came in, he could turn off the projector and it was my job (as the person closest) to retract the screen.

He took it all very seriously. And this was in California! A place many people think of as a bastion of democracy and free speech. Maybe he was lying to get us interested. Maybe there was no admin about to come down on his head for teaching us. But he certainly acted like there was, and I know that it happens in other places in the country too.

I work at a school now, and honestly I found it weird that instead of having everyone wear red and gold or something last Thursday for Lunar New Year (we do Spirit Week pretty often), it was "anything but a backpack" day. I know of only one class who was taught anything about the festivals taking place that day, within driving distance, even! And just before the December holiday, we have Spirit Week every year that NEVER includes other cultures. There's like 20 major holidays around that time, but the entire week is Christmas themed! We have a really diverse student and teacher population, too, and we are supposed to be an International Baccalaureate school. It's a really glaring omission and it goes to show that just because something isn't being actively censored, doesn't mean it's being taught.

There really is a lot we aren't taught in school.