Telling It As It Is

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, during a panel discussion, said he believed that the country’s education system needed to reemphasize certain principles, including teaching “the good, the bad, the ugly.”

During his live-streamed talk with the Office of Strategic Services Society on Thursday, Mattis said he believed that education in the U.S. should not gloss over uncomfortable topics, such as the effects of slavery, which still reverberate in contemporary society.

“As I look at the way American history is taught in our public schools, in many of our universities, I’m not sure how much affection I would be building in my students the way it’s being taught,” Mattis said.

“I believe in teaching the good, the bad, the ugly — and our country was born with a birth defect that we imported from the Old World — called slavery — and we’re still dealing with the after-effects of it,” he added.

Mattis’s comments come as senior U.S. military leaders have grappled with the racial inequality protests throughout the country in recent months. The protests culminated in a dramatic stand-off as National Guard forces were deployed in several states and federal troops were placed on stand-by orders in the summer.

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