• HongoBongo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It may have been, it’s relatively common for something like this to be included in coverage of Vietnam and the cold war. Current events related blocks are also often put in social studies curriculum and propaganda is a often a suggested tie-in.

    While your teacher sounds like they went above and beyond, they probably weren’t working against the system. And that’s coming from a burned out ex-teacher. We have issues in our schools but for the most part curriculum designers are trying to help. For every terrible Florida-like headline depicting a leap backwards there are many steps forward taken under the radar

    • PainInTheAES@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, this was a bit later for me but I remember a whole school year in like 7th or 8th grade that was all about dystopian literature and Nazism. Then it continued a little more in specific classes in HS. While I don’t remember an overt discussion of American propaganda there was a lot of discussion around 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and the portrayal of Jewish people in a book I can’t remember. Which I think broadly covers the ideas propaganda.

      I know other groups read The Things They Carried (I think) which may have covered American propaganda more directly since it’s about the Vietnam war.