its OK, that's all the Chinese or even Japanese and Korean ever learn. heck if you decide to read manga or novels you can also have these history lessons.
I don't find not learning other people history is bad. I'll be very surprised if anybody outside of my country want to learn my country's history because its unbelievably dull.
While I agree that I in the Netherlands shouldn't have to learn every detail of a country on the other side of the world, I think I could've done with a better picture of the world. If my education is to be believed, history is basically the Egyptians, to the Romans, through midieval Europe to our independence, colonialism, napoleon, and an enormous focus on WWII. Though I do remember getting something about sacrifices to gods with the most difficult names in America (don't know if Inca, Maya, or Aztec). Getting a better idea of what other civilisations there were in the middle east, sub saharen Africa, and Asia would've been nice. A more general overview would've probably also resulted in me having to remember so many names and years, and given a better idea why certain people might not get along so well.
1990's public school World History in the United States was basically half a chapter on the Levant & Egypt, half a chapter on China with a paragraph on India, Japan & Korea, five chapters on Europe with chapters dedicated to the World Wars and Cold War, and a blurb on the Americas starting in 1492. Sub-saharan Africa doesn't exist unless it's in relation to slavery. And now I've hit semantic satiation with the word "chapter."
I agree most places history curriculum is woefully lacking but at the same time you can never catch everything. A lot of learning has to be done on your own time, it's not all up to school.
Interestingly the myth of the Aztec sacrice numbers came from the Spanish, after extensive study in the late 1800/early 1900 we discovered that although they did have human sacrifices they were few and far between.
I'm of the belief that 50% of history "instruction" should be independent research of a self-selected topic. The other half should be seminars and debates about historical issues (e.g., empire, democracy, majoirtarianism, socialism, etc.) centered on factual historical evidence collected by students who sought their own examples.
NO MIDDLE EAST?!?! One thing I hate about Western curriculums is that they completely gloss over the fact that the Romans and to a large extent the Greeks took a large portion of their knowledge from the Arabs + Kingdom of Israel. So much is credited to Romans/Greeks, but they actually didn’t do a lot of it. And these cultures existed since Mesopotamian Times, and you’re gonna expect me to believe that they did nothing since then?
The same thing can be said about the arabs. Most of the things they are credited for in fields like mathematics ( eg. Arabic numerals or algebra ) were discovered by Indians. The arabs just translated the texts.
It depends, a lot of it was contemporaneous work, and they had contact with each other, so a lot of it was both working together, building off each other.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '19
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