Ever since I got into college about 14 years ago it seems like the conversation about American education, at least coming from MAGA and conservatives, is that the American education system is "teaching kids to hate America".
I don't understand this refusal to acknowledge nuance.
When you study American history, you learn about things like Slavery, riots such as the Zoot suit and Rodney King riots, Watergate, The Contra-Weapons deal, etc.
My point in listing is not to provide a "stack of evidence that America is bad"... but to point out that it isn't hard to acknowledge that within American history there are a lot of mistakes... but on the other side of that coin, the American dream of freedom and equality keeps us (at least hopefully) moving in a vaguely positive direction despite our mistakes.
We see evidence of this in things like John Browns raid during slavery, the Civil rights movement, and others.
So, again, why is there this seeming expectation to focus on the "good history" while effectively ignoring the real "bad history" that does accompany the good?
I find this especially puzzling because Germany literally had a cultural period where a lot of their film and art was about asking themselves as a country how they could enable Hitler... while the liberal half of America finds value in looking back critically on American history while the conservative half seemingly wants a hero's story about never doing anything wrong?
What is the value in ignoring historical mistakes?