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Truth Be Told, Those Model Things Are A Pain And Parents End Up Making Them Anyway
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For generations, California school kids have been building popsicle-stick models of California's missions as their fourth-grade projects. The state has now told teachers to stop assigning the project. Why? Well, missions have been taught as an important historical fact for a couple of centuries now, but Native Americans took the brunt of the invasion of Spanish colonists and missions, the state says, represent "sites of conflict, conquest and forced labor." This is in part like the Confederate statue issue -- something representing a form of genocide to some people while a point of pride to others -- but more complicated, because it's one thing to remove a statue honoring someone responsible for very bad things, and another when it's a whole building, a historic site. And a third thing: kids don't do popsicle stick models of prisons or concentration camps, so there's that, too. (Sacramento Bee)
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