How important is it to teach and know the negative information about some of the great people in history?

http://listverse.com/2013/12/05/10-reasons-lincoln-was-secretly-a-terrible-president/

Personally I long for a time when we had national, historical heroes.

I think the flaws of many historical figures have long been known and discussed, but largely in the context of higher education. Only by immersing yourself in the society and culture of the day can you put flaws like Ford’s apparent antisemitism in perspective.

Today, the day of the 24 hour news cycle, the flaws are regularly taken out of context, trotted out, and presented as ‘revelations’. They are not, and probably weren’t even noteworthy in the context of their day.

I particularly dislike trying to discredit or tear down public figures using their sexual indiscretions. If those things weren’t know/relevant at the time, how do they diminish that person’s accomplishments, years, decades or centuries later? It’s just voyeurism.

No, I don’t think we should whitewash prominent historical figures, but I think we’re bound to present their flaws in an appropriate contemporary context.

Just as important as it is to know the positive aspects!

We shouldn’t airbrush the negative out but we should get things in proportion. Winston Churchill may have drunk too much but he saved us from the Nazis. If we can’t recognise the greatness in men and women of the past we won’t have great men and women in the future.

I don’t know.. if was really disappointed to discover that Helen Keller was a staunch supporter of eugenics. She thought “defective” babies should be “weeded from the garden of life”—even though she likely would have been weeded from the garden by her own standards of usefulness. She also believed in mandatory sterilization for undesirables.

She is touted as such a hero in disability rights and activism, but she wasn’t too forgiving of the disabled in her own political beliefs.

It is absolutely crucial to teach the bad parts.
Otherwise you end up elevating people to almost godlike status, and this undue worship leads to almost religious obedience, like when almost all of Germany followed Hitler.

Hitler was not a great leader in history at the time Germany followed him. He was the contemporary leader of Germany during the Nazi era.

Sometimes a little anecdotal strangeness is fun to know about historical figures. It makes them seem more real. I don’t believe in going all out and calling someone an antisemitic or any hard evil’s as indicated. Those go a little too far and tarnish the good stuff these people may have done.

It is extremely hard to represent such complex issues to a 9 year old child. Historical context and hate are difficult. I think, when they are 9, things should be kept age-appropriate and relatively simple, but idealised ‘heroes’, white-washed for public mass-consumption should be something we teach our children to be skeptical of, they don’t have to know the exact details at 9, but their curiosity should be piqued so that they are eager to keep learning about history and the people mentioned, by name, in the history books, and why exactly they are mentioned by name and perhaps not someone else.

Most Americans have no idea how prevalent and just plain routine antisemitism was in this country. Ford was by no means alone. Thomas Edison had a rabid dislike of Jews and made no secret about it.

Exactly, @stanleybmanly. Much more productive to mention Ford in the context of American antisemitism of the era than to mention antisemitism in the context of Ford.

Yes. It’s a blemish on Ford, but one that needs to be taken contextually for the times. It’s not like he was the McCarthy of antisemitism.

@ibstubro It is true that both men are products of an era when no shame was attached to such beliefs or practices. Nevertheless, both men were actively involved in and devoted considerable revenues to the defamation and restriction of Jews in this country, and NO biographical description of EITHER should be considered accurate if these facts are omitted.

This Q has turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated. You all have inspired me to ask a Q about great people in history and some nagiatives about them we might not know. I didn’t know those facts about Helen Keller for instance. I’m not very surprised she believed in sterilization. I’m not sure what she would do with defective babies? Kill babies actually born? Or, did she mean abort fetuses?

Back to this Q though, I like the idea of teaching the negatives in proper context.

I have never liked the idea of teaching about antisemitism and hitler and even race relations in America until 6th grade or later, or so I wouldn’t be keen on teaching a 9 year old about Ford’s antisemitism. Yet, I do think it’s important for us to know people are complex and to not idealize or idolize them.

I don’t care at all about whether a man was an adulterer, unless it is a politician who preached family values, then I would be interested, because I am interest that he is a hypocrite.

GA’s for everyone! :)

@JLeslie She meant kill already born babies. Remember, back then there was no way to tell if a child had birth defects in utero. Today, she’d probably advocate for abortion, but back then, you had to wait for a baby to be born before you knew that it was “useless” for society.

http://disabilityrightsgalaxy.com/the-untold-story-of-helen-keller/
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/7-beloved-famous-people-who-were-wildly-pro-eugenics

I’m not in any way disagreeing with you about their antisemitism being included in their biographies, @stanleybmanly.

Can you source us to that, @keobooks? I’m not doubting you, but I’d like to read more on the subject.
[Without expending any more effort than necessary.] ~ ~

I only have vague memory of these facts.

I wanted to add, as much as I think context matters, it is not that long ago that Ford created his empire. There were plenty of people who were not antisemetic in America at that time, even though there were many who were. That Ford was an outspoken antisemite is disappointing for me. Although, it doesn’t take away from the great things he accomplished in my mind. This is not taught at all in school as far as I know. Not any grade. I didn’t learn it in college either, but I never took an American history class in college, so maybe it is taught?

@keobooks That’s awful. I guess there is a grey area for babies with disabilities that need surgery or they die. Like some Downs syndrome babies need life saving gastric surgery. If you let nature take its course the baby dies within a very short time. I remember hearing stories that hospitals would get court orders when parents would refuse the surgery.

Source : this includes her, but isn’t exclusively about her. It seems that she was pro abortion as well, and was more for letting nature take its course with defective babies.

Source Helen Keller and the Bollinger baby

Still, better than the Spartans. They actively killed babies they deemed unfit to grow into soldiers.
They owned slaves.
Their rite of passage for males was murdering a slave without getting caught.
They had institutionalised pederasty.
And yet they get idolised as badass manly freedom fighters in ‘300’.

The great lesson in all of this is that we pay a heavy price for the ignorance of our citizens regarding the inequities and negatives in our history.

@ragingloli Here I am, right now, wearing my Spartan sweatshirt. It’s the mascot for my university.

@JLeslie Talk about negatives. It is no exaggeration to consider the Spartans the Nazis of their era. Now there was a bunch dedicated to the advancement of the “master race” to the exclusion of ALL others.

I believe it is important to present both sides. It helps eliminate the mythical element in their life history and bring them back down to a more human level. I don’t believe that it is a negative thing to admit that humans, all humans, are flawed and knocking the pedestal out from under your national heroes lets you view them as equals and not demi-gods.