A straight, white man did this, so it is of no importance whatsoever.Zombie looks at the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead school of history teaching and how it does a disservice to America, children and even reality.
As a retired archaeologist and history professor, this is a particular bête noir of mine. I've always been sickened by the tendency of academics with a leftist agenda to push who are forever demanding "correctives" to traditional history that are invariably less "corrective" than consigning unpersons to the memory hole.
I see it in my daughter's schooling. Her school is actually quite a decent one and not a hotbed of Social Marxism, but last year she came away knowing who Sacajawea was, but not Lewis and Clark and she could rattle off all sorts of things about Amelia Earnhardt, but never heard of Charles Lindbergh.
It gets even worse at the university level. I once took over a course in first year World history and was assigned a doorstop of a textbook written by some maniac who thought that world history was a mammoth exercise in "me, too-ism" with every obscure culture and event on the planet crammed in at the expense of far more important events or even any sort of coherent narrative. Worse, it was an impossible book to teach from because it would have required a five-year class that would have had as much educational value as bolting through the British Museum at flat-out speed while chased by a pack of rabid dogs.
In the end, I dumped it and told my class, "The history of ancient China is fascinating and I'd be delighted to teach it–if this was a course on the history of China. It isn't. It's World history. And if we're going to study the events that shaped our modern society, that means we start in the Fertile Crescent, head for Greece via Egypt, on to to Rome, then we hang about in Europe until the 19th Century, and then bounce back and forth between the United States and the Old World with the odd imperial side trip until we clear the 20th century. That's where our world, everyone on this planet's world, was made and that's what we study. If aficionados of Mesoamerican or Icelandic history feel left out, tough."
12 comments:
What have you got against Icelandic history? The Germanic barbarians overrunning Europe in the Dark Ages (most recent ones) are certainly a part of our history, and the kingdoms they set up remained relevant right until they all went commie and made Reptilicus.
Iceland was a place for people who did not desire to be Fairhair's thralls (and objected to all his law-and-order business making it harder to earn an honest living as a pirate). Iceland has dramatic landscapes to visit, and mani interesting furri animals. Such as the majestic m00se. A m00se once bit... all right, I'll stop now.
Iceland has the oldest still extant democratic representative body - allthingi - as their parliament. It first assembled 930.
Ironmistress,
True, very interesting, but irrelevant.
They've got hakarl that they like to eat (something that could only have started on a dare). And many hard-to-spell volcanoes. Won't you reconsider?
But seriously, I think that a good history curriculum should include a few places off the main axis of Fertile Crescent/Mediterranean/Northern Europe/Atlantic Ocean, if only to show that not everyone thinks the same way we do! Giving some exceptions in addition to the rules. I would say that the mistake of the curricula you described was in trying to teach by giving only the exceptions, without giving the students a firm place to stand first.
And Iceland is totally inside European history.
I agree in principle, but one should never confuse the footnote with the story, nor the admirable with the important, because:
Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly
Let's say that miniature wargaming is the best way of familiarizing oneself to world history - including the history of Iceland and China.
And, unfortunately, to the human nature as well.
Also, it teaches one that several units of Frost Giants could totally conquer either place. I mean, they'd obviously need water wings to get to Iceland. Or those inflatable pool toys with the horsie heads.
China really should be on the curriculum, by the way, even if not in chapter 1. It is fascinating in its own right, and... well, place has ambitions that seem likely to intersect with ours.
China? As it stands, the Celestials always kept themselves too much to themselves and prized order over progress too much to have any real impact on World history. As for tomorrow, we shall see. I seem to recall another Oriental Colossus not too long ago whose rising sun quickly faded.
(Just saw Ironmistress's second commment. Drat these RSS feeds; I never get them in order).
The Risk school of history? I like it!
Well, they went from feudal to industrial in a very few decades, defeated the Chinese, defeated the Russians, built a colonial empire, and if Midway had gone differently, I'm not sure what might have happened. Now, the Lost Decade is getting to be 20 years long, and there's the demographic thing. I still wouldn't count them out.
As for China, they're looking at Africa at least, and building a blue-water navy. I think that interest is warranted.
Interest, yes and perhaps some concern, but I doubt that China will really be a major player in the 21st century. They'd like to be, but I'd like to be twenty years younger with a fat bank account and Churchill's liver. That doesn't make it so.
Frankly, the West has had a latent inferiority complex about the Celestials ever since Marco Polo and a generation doesn't go by that doesn't expect to see the mandarins dominating that globe. I well remember back in the late '60s how China was seriously regarded as the third superpower and probably greater than the USSR, but then the Bamboo Curtain fell and we saw their army was a load of baggy-uniformed peasants clutching WWI rifles with officers shouting at them through megaphones because there weren't any radios.
I suspect a similar result tomorrow. The Chinese miracle will turn out to be a candy-shell economy supported by massive state subsidies and a huge trade surplus that will one day suddenly implode. And then the draconian one-child policy will only make things worse with its lop-sided demographics that will leave the Chinese old instead of rich.
Not that I'll be raising a glass then because when China does go, it will take out a far chunk of the world financial market as well.
I remember that the film "Atomic Cafe" had an ending with film on Chinese A-bomb testing. The testing involved conscripts, who had absolutely no protective gear except gas masks. The film ended with a Chinese cavalry charge with drawn sabres - both horses and men wearing gas masks.
The allusion to orcs couldn't have been any stronger.
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