Item — HN Reader

> One of my favorites is that Santa Fe has been the capital city of Nuevo Mexico since 1610. Acoma, another city in modern-day New Mexico, is about 500 years older still

We were taught this in California in elementary school. Spanish colonial history actually tends to be taught at the same time or earlier than East Coast history in much of the American West (usually as "California" or "Texas" or "Colorado" history).

1 comments

I grew up in Texas and took Texas history. I learned things like Texas being the only US state that was once an independent country and where the Six Flags came from (later the name of an amusement park empire that originated in Texas).

But they never taught us much about New Mexico.

Not New Mexico but New Spain is heavily taught - it's an entire section.

I also don't know when you were in K-7 but knowing HN's age demographics probably the 1980s to early 1990s.

From the 2000s onwards, New Spain and Spanish rule was prominent.

Here are the snippets of the Texas History textbook from around the time I was in grade school in the 2000s [0][1][2]

[0] - https://worleytxhistory.weebly.com/uploads/8/7/9/6/8796216/c...

[1] - https://worleytxhistory.weebly.com/uploads/8/7/9/6/8796216/c...

[2] - https://worleytxhistory.weebly.com/uploads/8/7/9/6/8796216/c...

I once tried to explain away my ignorance of cities within a less recognized state as being a product of the Texas ISD (public schools). Where they heavily taught Texas history from a Texas lens, almost in a way that makes it seem as though Mexico, Spain, and the Comanche were infringing on us.

Then you moved on to US History where they briefly gave an overview of the 13 colonies forming the US (had to start somewhere), in which the great state of Texas is the largest within the contiguous US and pivots to all of Texas's great contributions and workings with the US. Re-visiting all the "alternative facts" learnt and filling in a lot of missing data has taken some time.

Vermont was also an independent country, and for longer than Texas was.

The Hawaiian Kingdom lasted from 1795 to 1893.

Yet another thing they didn't teach us in Texas history class.