undefined | Better HN

0 pointsevgen3y ago0 comments

> Holodomor is a special kind of famine that was politically and ethnically motivated.

This also applies to the Irish Potato Famine and that one is much more ethnically and culturally relevant for Americans, for example, so for the past century or so that was the one that was taught. Displacing its pedagogical role in US history education is just not going to happen.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

sc68cal3y ago· 2 in thread

The Irish potato famine is taught in American schools as something that just happened because the Irish depended on potatoes. No discussion of how British policy created these circumstances.

When socialism does it, we teach how the policy and ideology made it happen. When it happens anywhere else, it's how it was an unfortunate disaster caused by nature

ohiovr3y ago

Interesting that is what I was taught about the potato famine. I got some reading to do on it.

evgenOP3y ago

FWIW I guess it depends on how good of a history teacher you had. This was back in the 80s at a US public school in a part of the country with a very large Irish immigrant population, but I learned about why the Irish depended on potatoes (vis a vis caloric return for amount of effort in poor/rocky soil), the dangers of mono-cropping, the English system of landlords and tenant farming, and the long-term impacts of the Irish diaspora from this event upon other countries. As a comparison the Holodomor does not offer many useful lessons to students other than 'Stalin bad, top-down planning bad.'

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse