Should "real" history be taught to younger students?

[Seanchaidh]

In some ways, I'd want to be hesitant to tell our young children all the evils that my country has done throughout history as it might have the effect of endorsing those evils by precedent rather than tarnishing my country in the eyes of the youth. That is my only reservation about teaching the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Avoiding national embarrassment is not a good reason to distort the facts.

 

[CorvinBlack]

Smaller children would find it harder to understand. You can't just tell someone history. They have to understand the motivations, social etiquettes, economies, beliefs, etc. of the time.

By the time you're my age (15) most have the understanding of these things within current society, so it's easier to relate back to the past. There aren't many 10 year olds you can talk about the suffragettes and suffragists with and have them understand the numerous factors that relate to the happenings of the time.

As they become more aware of what current society is built upon, then you can explain how it has evolved over time.

If not you have to feed them all these ideas (in quite a bit of detail if they're going to properly comprehend it) at once. Which is a lot harder.

More or less, this. Truth should always be tought, especially in school, BUT, children at that age aren't truely capable, nor interested in that stuff. They want to play, watch television and be loud (so very loud).

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

I myself come from Sweden, and we didn't learn anything (in school) about the fact that it was our work in race-biology that inspired the Nazis... And that most Swedish people were pro-Nazi during WWII.

Being a swede myself, I can attest to that.

For instance, kids here are still being taught that Carl von Linnaeus ("Carl von Linné" in swedish) is sort of a national hero for his pursuits in cataloguing all species on the earth.

Little do the teachers tell the kids that he was pretty much the inventor of academic racism, which of course led to the inspiration of race-biology and eugenics like Xvito says.

He, like many other scientists of his time catalogued humans in a ranking system, where europeans were the prime of creation, and other "sub-human" species of humans were something "less" than the rest.

Of course, like with most 1700-1800's scientists they did pose some valuable scientific thinking which have actually improved the world somewhat. But it's plain disgusting when obvious villians of history is being celebrated in history classes throughout the world, regardless of how these villians work MIGHT have changed some things for the better.

But then again, history isn't really a scientific topic anyway, so you can hardly blame history teachers for being somewhat unprofessional.

History isn't really what happened, history is just an mix of stories that were written down by the victors of any given conflict. Mainly because the losers of these conflicts died...

 

[Hexenwolf]

his post...

The problem is all that stuff is still taught in Australia too... just not to a later stage. By this time history, and I don't know about over there, becomes more of an optional class. Actually, remembering back I don't think not only was it offered as an optional class later in the year but also focused more on ancient civilisations, in preparation for archaeology and the likes. So maybe you are right, and it is more of a flaw of our system which I would be the first to stand up and say 'it sucks.'

Still how early, and is it a mandatory class, is negative history taught over there?

Cause the feeling I get is your system is more like ours, where it is either only brushed on during later optional classes or not at all.

It is taught in classes required for graduation, and it is taught as in depth as everything else, which is to say, not super detailed, but definitely more than just brushing over it.

All of this is based on my personal experience, but I went to public school and don't see why it would be different elsewhere in the country.