Hi buggs!

I like Mark Twain. I dislike slavery which has been dead and gone for a few years.

Human trafficking is slavery and is alive and well even in the US.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/opinion/slavery-isnt-a-thing-of-the-past.html?_r=0

Yeah, but it's neither legal or approved of by society in the way that slavery was in Twain's time. Not really the same topic at all.

I think we should just stop teaching history in school....that stuff has no relevance on our lives today.

they should present it as it occurred, without endorsing or criticising what occurred.

I don't think teachers should preach, but i do think they should challenge students to look at events and ideas critically, morally, and ethically.

Slavery could have killed us.

I'm not even sure that those words are allowed in school any more. They might be viewed as judgemental and we cant have any of that.

i was referring more to the textbooks than the teachers, but agree with this as well.

"They should present it as it occurred, without endorsing or criticizing what occurred."

This!^^

"I don't think teachers should preach, but I do think they should challenge students to look at events and ideas critically, morally, and ethically."

America's schools, especially at college level, aren't exactly the fountainhead of moral rectitude and situation ethics has been popular for several generations now. I will posit that the teachers aren't qualified to appropriately challenge students.

I will posit that many of the parents who indoctrinate their kids with half-truths aren't qualified to appropriately challenge them either.

I will agree that most parents of today are blithering nit-wits.

Most parents today are a result of the "greatest generation" being to busy to teach them. Left it up to the hippies who now run the higher instutions of learning.

Well ... there is that, DD Regs.

The writing of history is in the hands of the victors and those in charge at the time.

Our institutions of higher learning have been under the control of skulls full of mush for too many generations.

I actually laughed out loud, then I felt sad because I knew someone would qualify your statement. Probably someone who thinks David Barton is actually a historian.

Wait! How did I end up back in the '60s again? Hasn't this tired old chestnut withered away yet?

Wow. We really have some broad brushes here in the 'Cooler. Don't we?

Some people try to hard even when those around them plead for them to stop.

Hey, Shemp. How you been? Love your avatar.

I am kind of partial to DD's.....

"Hasn't this tired old chestnut withered away yet?"

Apparently not. Should it have?

I already knew what Twain thought about slavery from reading Huck Finn, but thanks.