How is the Vietnam War taught in the U.S?

[commodore96]

We covered Vietnam more than WW2 in our school. American schools have a curricular tendency of making the US look like douche bags more than heroes. For the New York State exams it is far more common to see issues that the government made mistakes on or bad press in our country (slavery, women rights, water gate, vietnam, treatment of Indians, dropping bombs on Japan, the KKK, carpet baggers and scalawags, failure to free holocaust camps earlier in WW2, importance of Staligrad in WW2, Russia declaring war on Japan to end WW2, etc.) then actual good things. For our Advance Placement exams two years ago for American history the essays were on how America as a whole failed in desegregation, and how Brown vs. Board wasn't the end all case for equality.

In short we focus more on the bad in our country than the good.

 

[Canid117]

Most schools just kinda gloss over it, they instead focus on the Home Issues at the time, and not the fact that technically the US won the Vietnam War

*Looks at current map of Vietnam*
I think we lost that one in the end buddy.

 

[Jodah]

In high school we learned it briefly in one of my AP classes because we moved faster than the normal one. The normal class didn't cover it at all, they ran out of time after WWII. What was covered can basically be summed up as "It was bad, lots of people died, and the pinko commies bitched about it til we stopped." Worst part is I went to a New York school, which has one of the best public school systems in the nation.

 

[Shy_Guy]

In short we focus more on the bad in our country than the good.

Perhaps there's been more bad than good?

Still, I'd be interested in learning where you went to school. Most schools are quite the opposite in general. They teach "America Good, World Bad".

 

[Lord of Random]

My guess is the learning content differs from state to state. In New York we spent entire units on it throughout high school.

 

[Dragonasclaws]

My high school spent a few weeks on it, but the way my teacher taught it is a way I will never forget. Between the Vietnam and Korean wars I realized just how grotesque war truly is. Heck here in america we had a TV show based upon the horrors of the Korean war. It was called M*A*S*H and despite its comedic undertones it truly exposed those same horrors to the american people. I just watched the reunion episode last night and found out that they did a lot of research upon the wars and pulled several episodes from real life experiences. In short the knowledge is there all we need to seek it and we won't have to search too hard for it.

 

[health-bar]

leading up to high school, all my Vietnam knowledge was self taught (in fact most war knowledge I know is self taught.)

My US history class spent as much time as we could on it, but with about 30 more years left to cover and about two weeks to do it we couldn't go as in depth as I hoped.

I wish there was a Military History class. The only reason I know as much as I do about wars is because of personal research.

 

[sabercrusader]

We just studied it this year but we focused mostly about the peace movement for it and about 1968, lots and lots of 1968. We went over it well enough, but I urge people who post about the artrocites commited to the vietnamese by the american soldiers to consider this. If a person or persons trying to kill you and have killed a couple of your buddies in other villages by hiding in the crowd dressed as a regular vietnamese civillian, would you want to make sure that it dosen't happen to you? Your main objective is to survive, and you can't know if that random vietnamese civillian is part of the vietcong or what. I'm not trying to say that there wern't bad things that american soldiers did to the vietnamese, but you have to understand the reasoning behind what they did and unserstand their predicament back then.

 

[Macgyvercas]

How it was taught where I went? It was taught as a highly opposed abysmal failure on the part of the government.

 

[Fleaman]

I remember getting the summary; bits about the war's origin with the French, the word "Vietcong", and the fact that we lost. A lot of time was spent on the reactions of the American public to the war, it being the 60s and all, and about the draft. On the other hand, I don't know anything about what actually happened in Vietnam. It wasn't glossed over that we sucked, but we didn't really talk about why. Contrast treatment of the Revolution or the Civil War, where we heard all about Washington fooling the Hessians or about Stonewall Jackson's friendly fire problem.

Then again, this might not be a total MURICA FUCK YEAH issue, since we're talking about the second half of the semester and even World War I is just viewed from the window as we drive past.

 

[sabercrusader]

Most schools just kinda gloss over it, they instead focus on the Home Issues at the time, and not the fact that technically the US won the Vietnam War

If we're going off how many we killed then yes, we did win by a landslide. But if we're going off the main objective of the war, to keep South Vietnam from going communist, then we lost. In war, the way to tell who won in the end is based off the completion of your objective, not how many of the enemy you kill (unless your war is to eradicate a certain race or something).

 

[jaketheripper]

Inspired by the topic asking how the War of Independence is taught in the UK.

Basically, I ask because, generally, it's held that the US entered Vietnam (amongst other countries during the Cold War, like Korea) for what can be described as less than noble reasons, and then making a bit of a mess of it. For example, at my school, we shortly studied the 'Search and Destroy' tactics, which as far as I understand, was basically US soldiers walking into Vietnam villages and wiping them clean out, regardless of whether the inhabitants were innocent or not. That's one small part of a part of the course on US foreign policy we did.

Anyhow, back to the point. What sort of stance is taken when the Vietnam war is taught to US students? Under what light do they relay the information to you? How is the Vietnam War taught in the US education system?

well, my class ended the year with it. it was summarized as "America! FUCK YEA!" followed by a soundtrack of the rolling stones and credence Clearwater revival.

But really, it was just "we did horrible crap...But we stopped the spread of communism! so its ok!." we did watch tons of footage of us killing crap with fortunate son and gimme shelter as background music.

 

[CrazyMedic]

At least in my school we learned a fair bit about us search and destroy tactics that kind of stuff, the things they didn't teach us was all the evil stuff the allies did in WWII like the fire bombing of Dresden.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

We covered Vietnam more than WW2 in our school. American schools have a curricular tendency of making the US look like douche bags more than heroes. For the New York State exams it is far more common to see issues that the government made mistakes on or bad press in our country (slavery, women rights, water gate, vietnam, treatment of Indians, dropping bombs on Japan, the KKK, carpet baggers and scalawags, failure to free holocaust camps earlier in WW2, importance of Staligrad in WW2, Russia declaring war on Japan to end WW2, etc.) then actual good things. For our Advance Placement exams two years ago for American history the essays were on how America as a whole failed in desegregation, and how Brown vs. Board wasn't the end all case for equality.

In short we focus more on the bad in our country than the good.

Curious, it's the complete opposite down here in Texas. Makes me wish I had gone to school up in the frigid north...

I remember covering the revolutionary war and ww2 in immense detail (down here it is common to instill the "America - Fuck Yeah!" gunwank mentality in children), while ignoring or downright falsifying information to the contrary. I remember learning about Vietnam as a conflict the US entered into as part of the containment policy to support the democratic south against aggression from the north (that's complete bullshit incidentally, the south was basically a military dictatorship and the refusal of then president Diem to step down after a fraudulent election was a primary cause for the escalation of the conflict), while completely ignoring how the french managed to fuck everything up beforehand. We never discussed the events leading up to the US involvement, and only briefly mentioned My Lei as an example of how horrible the war was. We covered the Tet offensive as a military defeat for the north, but as an immense propaganda victory for them. We concluded the course by briefly mentioning how Saigon fell after the US pulled out.
It wasn't until college (which apparently only exists to erase the mistakes high school education instills in students) that I learned a bit more about the war and its true impact.

 

[Prosis]

My highshool spent some time on it. I don't recall it all that well, but basically, it was taught that we went in for poor reasons, and everything went downhill from there. At this time, we were in the Cold War, and The Soviet Union had been picking up satellite countries and leading them into communism (whether this was a good or bad thing for those countries, I have no idea). America was nervous about the rapid spread of communism, and decided to pick its battle in Vietnam.

There was already a faction in Vietnam that wanted independence, so we decided to support and bolster that faction against the rest of the country.

We had superior numbers and technology, but it didn't mean anything due to the nature of the war being mainly guerrilla warfare and the huge home-turf advantage Vietnam had over us. I don't remember the numbers, but I know a significant portion of the deaths and injuries were simply due to the viciousness of the jungle. The war became immensely unpopular back home.

In desperation to turn the tides, generals of America attempted to remove the home-turf advantage by destroying the home turf. Fly-overs with carpet bombs to blast hundreds of acres of jungle. We also used Napalm, which literally melted flesh off of bones from the heat, and Agent Orange, a really nasty neurochemical warfare that caused delusions and stuff.

At this point, even the Vietnamese seeking independence wanted us gone. Loss of support in both Vietnam and in America, with staggering death tolls on either side, and no clear way of winning the war without burning Vietnam to the ground, we retreated.

Since America doesn't like to lose though, I think technically, we've declared a ceasefire, rather than actually surrendering. But being as we ran back across the pond, the war's over, and we lost.


It was taught as a war we had no business fighting. Or at least, we shouldn't have initiated draft, and we shouldn't have resorted to bombing. It should have just been support for the faction, not a full offensive movement. I'm pretty sure it goes down as one of the darkest times in US history.

I'm no historian though. This is just what I recall from my highschool.

 

[Lionsfan]

That the US won the Vietnam war, possibly?

The fall of Saigon, and the unification of North and South Vietnam by the communists sort of suggests that wasn't the case.

Some are even so ignorant as to believe the U.S. "won" the war.

As an aside, anyone who believes there are "winners" in war needs to seriously reevaluate oneself.

If we're going off how many we killed then yes, we did win by a landslide. But if we're going off the main objective of the war, to keep South Vietnam from going communist, then we lost. In war, the way to tell who won in the end is based off the completion of your objective, not how many of the enemy you kill (unless your war is to eradicate a certain race or something).

*Looks at current map of Vietnam*
I think we lost that one in the end buddy.

During all of which the United State's had withdrawn the majority of our forces. In 1971 due to Public Pressure at home the United States had began withdrawing most of our troops out of the area, including the Repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Act (which had basically kickstarted the war for the US). By 1973 most of them were out of Vietnam, and a <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accord>Cease-<url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Ending_the_War_and_Restoring_Peace_in_Vietnam>Fire was drawn up. At which point the US began significantly cutting aid to South Vietnam and left. Nixon wished to continue the war, however the Democratic Congress refused to continue escalation after we had left, including passing <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Church_Amendment>legislation to cease all direct military involvement. After the US had left in 1973 the North Vietnamese began to step up their attacks, including launching several assaults in early 1974, which US troops were not there to witness. When Gerald Ford took over for Nixon Congress also cut aid to South Vietnam from 1 Billion to .7 Billion. The President of South Vietnam announced on January 4th, 1974 that said <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accord>Cease-<url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Ending_the_War_and_Restoring_Peace_in_Vietnam>Fire was no longer in effect and a state of war was in place. The 1974 Mid-Term Elections brought an even stronger Democratic congress who was going to completely stop US involvement and passed legislation to stop all aid to South Vietnam by 1976. North Vietnam would go on to stage several assaults, regaining lost ground, and eventually unified Vietnam.

So when Saigon fell, and Vietnam was united as one the US wasn't involved at all. When the US was last involved South Vietnam still existed. So TECHNICALLY the US achieved it's goal of stopping the spread of Communism in South Vietnam and withdrew from Southeast Asia, having completed it's goal. I'm not going to debate Ethic's or whether or not we should have been in the war, but from a purely objective point the US achieved it's primary goal.

The stereotype here is that the US got it's ass handed to it by a bunch of militia when the truth is actually the opposite of that. Hell the most well known attack by the North Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, ended up in a resounding Tactical Victory by the US. So once again, TECHNICALLY the US won the Vietnam war

 

[Peter Pottorff]

In my high school we learned about th Tolkin resolution,Ho Chi Mihn,Ho Chi Mihn road, the Viet Cong,The Tet offensive,bombings of North Vietnam, and Vietnamizeation.

 

[Sparrow]

Well, I'm a 2nd year in Highschool, they seem to be focusing on WWI and II, and leaving Vietnam for later...
The way I see it is, we stuck our noses in a place it didn't belong and then it got bit the fuck off...
Go America!

So you know nothing of the war... nice opinon but fact is we were asked to help the French, it was their slice of territory. And when we arrived we were handed a ball to a already lost game.

But yeah, I'm all for never helping anyone for asking for help to defend whats theirs, mostly the USA has to fit the bill of life and resources and we always get made the devil afterwards.

That's not really the point of the backlash though, is it? From what I've seen, people in the UK tend to be more pissed at the massacre of the villagers thing than the "You shouldn't have been there!" thing. Admittedly, it's never really blamed on the French over here and we're really quite fond of being dicks to the rest of Europe.

 

[Ladette]

It's been a few years, but from what I remember we talked about: our reasons for going in, why we did so poorly, how unpopular it was back home, and how we failed to meet our objective. We spent as much time on it as we did WW2.

Judging by some of the responses i'm shocked. I grew up in one of the worst(currently the worst) state in the nation for education and somehow I ended up with a more neutral view then they did. Huzzah for good teachers I guess.

 

[Wintermoot]

judging by the first few posts it seems some schools glance over it in favor of WWII (where it was clearer who where the real bad guys) which is kinda strange since my own school dedicated a entire chapter about my own countries dark history (the oppression,killing and exploitation of the native Indonesian people)