US History and actual History.

[flarty]

I wouldn't trust nothing you learned in a national curriculum to be unbiased at all.

I must ask, was the double negative intentional or a mistake?

Bah humbug.


But thinking about it. I suppose its hard to instil patriotism in you citizens if you really knew what cunts run/ran your country and what they do/did in your/our name.

 

[flarty]

slavery they only do cause they have black kids in there school and I'm sure they don't go to far into the nastiest parts.

Then explain why we don't learn about white slavery that predates the black slave trade. Instigated by the same people non the less.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

One thing I find fascinating is the American Revolution is not really taught in Britain. One of my British friends can lecture me extensively on the lineage of the royal families of Europe, but he cant recall ever learning about the revolution other than it being a thing that happened.

Yeah, I don't remember one word spoken in our history classes about the American revolution, but that may just be because in our 2000 years of history picking the bits we left in was very piecemeal, and honestly the American Revolution had very little impact on Britain's layout and infrastructure when compared to many other events (eg. Romans building roads and cities still used today, Normans building castles, Victorians rocking suits and top hats, the Earl of Sandwiches revolutionary addition to the national luchbox etc.) In fact the only focus given to different nations I can remember which didn't directly involve the British were the Egyptians, basically because at that time the British Isles were just full of boring Druids and Picts painting themselves blue and having sex with trees.

I should mention I'm from Northern Ireland, so we also spent a lot of time in History learning how the English stole our wimmen-folk and ate our babies, but we also did the mainland history of England so don't know what the English/Welsh/Scots learned instead of our national hateory classes.

Then we covered 1066, the Normans, the Victorians, (although the worst bits about the whole disaster with Pakistan/India etc. was conspicuous by its absence) there were a lot of piecemeal single events focused on (black death, fire of London, Florence Nightengale, Greyfriars Bobby for some daft reason) and the rest was Hitler. I think half of our entire history classes were devoted to Hitler. What a guy.

We did do a module on Civil Rights movement, one on the Indian plight for independence (with Ghandi and the Indians from India, not the Indians from America) which kinda went back and gave a crash course in how British colonialism completely wrecked those areas, and one on the American Civil Rights movement but that was only for people that kept history on as one of their final year classes.

P.S. The history classes in Britain do skim over a lot. To be fair they don't shy away from saying that the British Empire ran heavily off the slave trade, and the colonial policies of Britian back then led to a tonne of atrocities, but apart from the general slave trade overview and that infamous single drawing of the inside layout of a slave ship that seems to be copy pasted into every article on slavery ever.

see?: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=slave+ship&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Bq9ZUdjOI4bGPNrlgIAJ&biw=1366&bih=666&sei=CK9ZUYLkEMix0QWqxIGACg#um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=description+of+a+slave+ship&oq=description+of+a+slave+ship&gs_l=img.3..0i24l2.8993.14145.0.14342.21.19.2.0.0.1.97.1130.19.19.0...0.0...1c.1.7.img.rGI0Oc8tmws&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.d2k&fp=8407db7fa6860e91&biw=1366&bih=666
I mean, it's not even a good picture; it's really grainy and rough. You think someone would take it and draw a nicer one.

You'll be loathe to actually get any solid details of any atrocity caused by British forces overseas in any of our school history books. We're told they happened, and sometimes given the names and dates, but never given any details or proper focus.

P.P.S. When we are about 14 history classes shift from learning about history to learning about the sources our history comes from. This generally involves being given an article, or propaganda cartoon or something else, and having to read it and examine how reliable the source is, and what it can tell us about the people that wrote it (note that that means we aren't necessarily writing about the subject the article is about, but examining the motives of the author.) This is probably the best part of our history classes, apart from the time we made viking longboats out of clay in Primary school... it's great because it gets people to actually critically think about what they are being told, to bad no one ever bothered to critically think about what the textbook isn't telling them.

 

[Calcium]

I wouldn't trust nothing you learned in a national curriculum to be unbiased at all. Here in the UK they constantly leave out the whole slave trade out of our history lessons even though our nation was one of the biggest instigators of it, as well as leaving out many of the horrendous slaughters and injustices from British colonialism.

They taught the slave trade in my high school, as well as it's abolishion, with a focus on Olaudah Equiano. Maybe the modules are different in Scotland / between schools. That being said, history is large enough that schools could probably teach only British disgraces for every history lesson and still not cover them all.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I should mention I'm from Northern Ireland, so we also spent a lot of time in History learning how the English stole our wimmen-folk and ate our babies, but we also did the mainland history of England so don't know what the English/Welsh/Scots learned instead of our national hateory classes.

I'm from Wales, and we spent a fair time on Llewelyn the Great, the last native Welshman to hold the title 'Prince of Wales'. He led the last successful Welsh revolt against England, and for a while succeeded, but of course was, in the end, defeated.
Though I will say that I was brought up in a rather welsh area of Wales.

And to further sollidify your earlier point: In Germany kid are taught pretty obsessively how bad their nazi history was, whereas in Japan the kids hear very little if anything about the bad things Japan did.

I find that comparison interesting.

I've always presumed that the reason for that was the Japanese thing for honour. You know, not wanting to shame their nation by calling attention to the various acts committed during the war.

interesting take Da Orky. Could be correct, but i often think that the US occupation and the various changes and or requirements forced upon Japan during this period could be added to that as well. Afterall, the US was basically building an ally across the world in whatever image they wanted....

You got the quote HTML slightly off. Fixed it for now.
Anyway, it could quite possibly be due to that. Although, remember that the UK and France still have troops in Geramny, left over from WW2. Not much of an occupation, of course, but its still worth remembering. I think they're due to be out by 2019.

You'd be surprised. The first 'advanced' cultures appeared in Europe (Minoan), Indian (Indus Valley) and China (Semi-legendary Xia dynasty) at roughly the same time, within a few hundred years, around 2500 BC or so. Even written Middle-Eastern civilization only goes back to about 3200 BC, though of course the first and, for quite a while largest, cities were situated along the banks of the Euphrates/Tigris.
If you date civilizations by the invention of writing, you get a bit more variety. The oldest written Chinese we have dates to about 1500 BC, Indian about 2600 BC and Minoan roughly 3000 BC.
For references, Ancient Egypt was united in about 3100 BC.

All figures were gotten from Wikipedia.

I am surprised.

I love learning, thanks.

You're welcome. The history of the first civilizations is somewhat of a hobby to me, especially how they developed over time.

 

[The White Hunter]

I agree that the Soviet Union's participation and sacrifice in WWII is often underplayed

I'm not sure how it's dealt with in the US, but as a Brit I've never spoke to anyone who was taught in school an accurate view of how much the USSR did unless they did an A level in history. Admittedly most of my history of the period was focused on the build up to and causes of the war.

In my GCSE history class we spent a good deal of time studying the eastern front actually, it was very interesting and is oft overlooked. We also spent a fair bit of time on the cold war, key events, and the russian side of it all. Stalin may have been a mass murdering monster but I'll be damned if the corruption that followed him didn't just spiral out of control.

OT: History is written by the victors. That's just how it is, a lot of the military history of the last century is buried away and hidden from open view. The US funded and armed a lot of organisations and dictatorships and countries that it must now regret doing so during the cold war, all to kind of irk Russia. Such as arming the afghans whilst the russians were there, that worked out well for them.

 

[flarty]

I wouldn't trust nothing you learned in a national curriculum to be unbiased at all. Here in the UK they constantly leave out the whole slave trade out of our history lessons even though our nation was one of the biggest instigators of it, as well as leaving out many of the horrendous slaughters and injustices from British colonialism.

They taught the slave trade in my high school, as well as it's abolishion, with a focus on Olaudah Equiano. Maybe the modules are different in Scotland / between schools. That being said, history is large enough that schools could probably teach only British disgraces for every history lesson and still not cover them all.

I'm pretty sure Scotland does get to set its own national curriculum. Hell you guys don't even have to pay for your prescriptions. Good luck with your independence referendum. I may be knocking on your door to let me in if you get it.

 

[Unsilenced]

There's a pretty big difference between U.S portrayals in media and what we're actually taught. We don't, like, watch "The Patriot" and think 'yeah pretty much.'

My high school history class was pretty unbiased, encouraging us to have debates over issues like joining WWI and dropping the second nuke on Japan. In college, the U.S history course I took was basically "White People Suck" (WPS 072), a long and excruciating look at just how fucking terrible we've been to everyone who isn't the same color as us, and a good few that were as well. It even went beyond the standard issue "things Americans 'don't know' (have heard a billion times) about American history" into more swept under the carpet things, like the fact that the Union didn't give half of a two-bit fuck about slaves, and how the freesoilers were less "Slavery is bad, mmkay" and more "We don't want no negros in our new land!" Basically the roots of abolition were founded in the idea that slavery just wasn't racist enough.

I'm not sure what things are like at public schools, but I can't imagine them being too different. I know there's not a lot good to be said for our education system, but from what I've seen gung-ho patriotism is likely more an artifact of someone's parents than their teachers.

 

[CriticalMiss]

The USA doesn't have 'history', they're just toddlers compared to Britain and our illustrious record of being invaded by people over the past two thousand or so years!

I'm not sure that this is isolated to the States, it wouldn't suprise me to hear that every country wants to paint itself well. It's just that the USA has all of its history crammed in to a few hundred years. On the whole nuking Japan thing, I don't see why they didn't detonate a bomb off the coast of Japan to show them that they were willing to use one rather than slaughtering civilians. But I guess someone wanted to play with their toys.

 

[AT God]

The most bias I found is within America's founding, especially in younger education. In early grade school it wasn't mentioned that the Native Americans opposed the colonist's expansion over America. The Thanksgiving story was basically as close to the truth as history would go. I don't think any of my history books throughout grade school even mentioned the numerous wars against the Indians, almost all the books basically say that colonists arrived, made friends with the Indians, then opposed the tyrannical rule of the British. It blames everything on the British rule and ignores the fact that the Americans did some bad things too.

Also information on the Vietnam war is rarely consistent between history books.

 

[guitarsniper]

one big thing that I've noticed that US history tends to ignore is post-revolution interactions between the US government and its agencies and Native American tribes. While history classes will totally talk about the evils of slavery and the fight for women's rights, and the internment camps of world war 2, they'll ignore things like the boarding school system, the wounded knee massacre, the repeated treaty violations, et cetera.

 

[Lunar Shadow]

Cold War history as a whole tends to be rather skewed or ignored (part of the reason I am a Cold war historian-in-training) what with Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, and Argentina getting hosed by the US, the depictions of the Vietnam War in media, the USSR in general. So much is either not taught or is so skewed as to be almost outright lies. Hell, right now I ma writing a paper about North Vietnamese counterintelligence and how it was able to not just counter, but actively turn US intelligence operations against the,. Seriously, look up MACV SOG and the CIA Agent Ajax and his preddecessors. Very interesting.

 

[flarty]

The USA doesn't have 'history', they're just toddlers compared to Britain and our illustrious record of being invaded by people over the past two thousand or so years!

I'm not sure that this is isolated to the States, it wouldn't suprise me to hear that every country wants to paint itself well. It's just that the USA has all of its history crammed in to a few hundred years. On the whole nuking Japan thing, I don't see why they didn't detonate a bomb off the coast of Japan to show them that they were willing to use one rather than slaughtering civilians. But I guess someone wanted to play with their toys.

LoL which the British empire more than made up for

The explosion of the atomic bombs was decided more than anything to show the commie ruskies not to fuck with 'merica "cus now we have the bomb" which was then followed up with conflicts with every small insignificant country that even dared to tread the path of socialism.

Also the idea of detonating the bomb on a neighboring island was discussed. I guess they believed it wouldn't have the desired effect.

 

[Marik2]

I dunno, do they teach you guys about Japanese American Internment?

Not like we're clean of blood either, Canada did the same thing.

They taught that in my school, but it was not covered in detail just like any other subject.

Each topic is just talked about for like a week and something else gets taught after that

 

[StBishop]

First off, some people contend that the empire of Japan was willing to surrender, it is by no means accepted fact, in the US or out.

Personally, I feel that the US perception of the war overall is skewed into the Uncle Sam and others show. Russia is neglected fairly often, the European allies show up only to cry for help and be rescued and the rest of the commonwealth is omitted entirely. This is a bug-bear for me, being Australian in that we, along with the Kiwis, Papuans, Indonesians and other islanders, were, for a fair while, the last allied powers actively fighting the Japanese and that gets completely ignored. Even after the yanks showed up, they tended to take the 'glory' assignments and leave the shitty, obscure jobs to the ANZACS. I mean, look at 'the pacific', to the best of my knowledge Australian soldiers only show up to show how ungrateful we are to our glorious fucking american saviours.

Not to mention more bombs were dropped on Darwin (Capital City of Australia's Northern Territory) than all of the US, let alone just Pearl Harbour.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

Speaking as a 'historian-in-training' (I'm a military history graduate student), I can say that all countries warp history to meet their own ends. It is particularly bad in high school, which I honestly don't even consider to be real history. More just political indoctrination.

There is a saying in historical circles about the study of history:

"Read one book [on a given subject] and become a clone [of that person's point of view]. Read two books and become confused. Read five books and start to form your own opinion. Read twenty books and start to become wise."

Simply put, you can't just take the first thing you hear about a historical subject at face value. Nor can you believe everything in a book simply because it is, well, in a book. Historians try to be totally objective, but it is simply not possible. We are human after all.

The US can get pretty silly with some of their claims. Particularly around the Vietnam War, War of 1812 and both World Wars. Though as I said before, they certainly aren't unique in that area.

 

[Robot Number V]

Well, about the nuclear strikes in Japan, I had a teacher tell us that we really don't know if dropping the bombs was the right move, and we'll never know if it actually limited casualites or not, though she personally thought it was the wrong move. She had us each write an essay defending or condemning the nuclear strikes.

I dunno, do they teach you guys about Japanese American Internment?

Not like we're clean of blood either, Canada did the same thing.

They sure do. In fact, the majority of my high school history classes were spent learning about what dicks the US has been in the past. Imperialism, isolationism in WWII (yeah, I wasn't taught that we were the conquering heroes, I was taught that we were kinda dickish for waiting so long to get involved) deplorable treatment of Native Americans...The list goes on.

You know what they say.
"History is written by the victor"
Or in the U.S.'s case it written to make themselves more awesome and make everyone jelly.

Mmmm. Hmm-mmm. And what evidence exactly are you basing that statement on?