Standard schooling taught the Enlightenment as rescue while hiding commons destruction.

Evidence

I remember learning in social studies classes about all the ways that the Enlightenment period helped to rescue people from feudalism. We were never taught to think about the ways peasant people’s subsistence lives were good for them, or the ways the loss of their lives on the land caused them to be harmed or exploited in ways that may have been even more degrading. Instead, we were taught of all the ways that industrialization and ideas about “democracy” that grew out of this period represented a kind of cultural “evolution.” When I first began to read about “enclosure” and the “commons” it totally flipped my worldview on its head. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1370

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: critiquing how mainstream history curricula narrate the Enlightenment as pure liberation — pairing with the reader’s polyad thread on storytelling/interpretation.
• XREF: Connects to ch14’s claim that schooling has historically perpetuated social and ecological violence.