Should history in class be censored?

[Cianyx]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thaddeus-russell/fired-teaching-american-history_b_767172.html

The obvious answer to it is 'no'. But give the article a read and you would see where I'm coming from. We can take prominent examples in the censorship of war events in textbooks. However, long after a war, books became modified to acknowledge and accommodate the wrongs committed by both sides during war. This occurs as governments feel safe to denounce past acts made by previous governments without  any backlash. And by presenting this view, children are still taught (or indoctrinated) a moral lesson that 'war is inherently bad'.

I showed them that during the American Revolution drunkards, laggards, prostitutes, and pirates pioneered many of the freedoms and pleasures we now cherish -- including non-marital sex, interracial socializing, dancing, shopping, divorce, and the weekend -- and that the Founding Fathers, in the name of democracy, opposed them. I argued not only that many white Americans envied slaves but also that they did so for good reason, since slave culture offered many liberating alternatives to the highly repressive, work-obsessed, anti-sex culture of the early United States. I demonstrated that prostitutes, not feminists, won virtually all the freedoms that were denied to women but are now taken for granted. By tracing the path of immigrants from arrival as "primitives" to assimilation as "civilized" citizens, I explained that white people lost their rhythm by becoming good Americans. I presented evidence that without organized crime, we might not have jazz, Hollywood, Las Vegas, legal alcohol, birth control, or gay rights, since only gangsters were willing to support those projects when respectable America shunned them.

Now we are presented with another view, perhaps too premature for the state's liking, that human action is amoral. What we consider to be a disgusting trait can be both progressive or regressive to society. Likewise, something good can also be constructive or destructive. It's quite understandable that a lot of parents would want to shield their from this amorality but can this censorship ever be justified?

[Eriny]

I don't see those ideas as being all that revolutionary? Also, I don't think he is saying at all that human action is amoral, he's saying that a lot of the things people hail as being so important to civility and society came from places they might not necessarily think of as civil and movements they may not like very much on the face of it. He's saying that our history is as much indebited to minority groups and social outcasts as much as it is by politicians. I can't believe that what he is saying has been censored, it seems pretty common sense to me.

[Cianyx]

If it wasn't censored, he wouldn't have been fired from his job.

Actions are amoral in the sense that benefits can stem from all walks of life and it's not purely restricted to being conducted by 'progressives'. Not all good things come from 'good' people and not all bad things come from 'bad' people. He appeares to be lashing out at the liberal left from my reading.

[Eriny]

Yes, I think so. Although I haven't read his book or any of his papers. I do think all sides of a debate over history should be attacked though, including those from the liberal left. Whether this battle should go on in a classroom I'm not sure, but certainly by university you'd think the students could handle it.