this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Sounds pretty cool tbh, wish we sang socialist songs instead of having to do the pledge of allegiance to the flag every morning
Add Maoism, Xi Thoughts, patriotism, nationalism, and a sprinkle of anti-Japanese stances to your curriculum, then worship and thank grandad Xi every day for providing such a perfect country, and you'd have a full course meal. Remember that the Party is always watching.
I've read through your earlier post and it doesn't really strike me as frightening or anything. It seems like standard kind of national mythology stuff that gets taught to kids no matter where they're from. What's the alternative? Is there a country on Earth that has an education curriculum amounting to "We suck and everything sucks. The government should be overthrown"?
Honestly what you described makes me kinda envious. It sounds cool, and it seems to have better outcomes. Kids in China outperform kids from my country in every metric from what I know, including stuff like understanding of civics, history, etc. Whereas when I was growing up I was told national mythology that makes excuses for genocide, like that pilgrims were friends with native americans, and that there were "kind" slave owners. I was continuously told the American Civil War was over a complex disagreement over civics, not slavery, and in fact the northern states started the war over jealously of the south's freedoms. The south which was a slave economy. I was told my state of Texas was justified in its war against Mexico for vague semblances of freedom and justice, even though the Texans were fighting to keep their slaves.
You did not just ignore the blatant chauvinism and idolization of the leader in my post and think it's "standard national mythology stuff that gets taught everywhere", let alone envy them.
You have your own problems in your country, doesn't mean that the rest of the world runs the same way, and China isn't immune to white-washing or downplaying history events either.
For example, "文化大革命 the Cultural Revolution" is something that they ~~downplay significantly~~ (Edit: I have educated myself, and depending on your elective courses in China, you could get textbooks that talk very extensively about the event, and you could get ones that touch lightly on it) in their history textbooks. "六四事件 Tiananmen Square protest" does not appear in history textbooks. And then you can find discrepancies between how the PRC and ROC teaches their history during the war to gain power in China.
You can read a pretty good write up, albeit in Chinese, here
Edit: And don't get me started on their blind hatred towards Western countries and the Japanese which they even taught to schoolkids. Take the most recent news for example. When Japan decided to dump diluted nuclear waste water into the ocean, their people were livid, and the government does no help to educate their people about how it was diluted and tested by the IAEA, in which they have their own scholars attending too. Tons of fish gone to waste because people were boycotting Japanese cuisine, people panic buying salt in fear of radioactive contamination, video clips of people crying about it and swearing to kill all Japanese or bomb them with nuclear bombs, and teachers asking kids to write a letter to Japanese leaders to tell them what evil they have done. Video. All the while, China has been silencing people online who tried to explain the science, sent a journalist to Fukushima to test the numbers then take down videos of people who actually went and tested their own waters and found out that their numbers are higher than what their state media showed in Fukushima, and hidden their own official nuclear waste reports. Video