How Much History is Being Taught?

[Silenxia]

Today had been big on this one mainly because of this story that I will tell.

I was on Deviant Art and I found a picture that a person who I watched posted of a woman. I checked it and I was impressed. That woman wasn't just anyone, she was actually a Queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Roman Syria, she even lead a revolt and actually conquered two places, her name was Zenobia, the picture is here

http://gypsy-tea.deviantart.com/art/Zenobia-346783262

Now this really has me thinking. When you post, how many of you knew this woman was there? I didn't know about her until I saw it and that really has made me angered and puzzled.

Simply because of this. We learn History in class, it's a requirement, but how much do we know? We know more about our own countries than World History. In my classes we talked about some stuff for a few weeks then moved straight on, the only people mentioned are names that People know about.

But is it right? Zenobia was a powerful woman, she became queen after her husband and stepson's deaths, she lead her people. There are other women who I can mention, but I wont' say for now.

But I must ask this;

Is it fair?

Is it fair to learn about some people but never know the other parts (or as they say take the class in collage to learn more)? How can we know about History if we overlook other parts? If we leave out other people to focus on the 'Main Ones'? Is it a fair thing?

[MightyOak]

It has nothing to do with fairness, in my opinion. What is taught is schools across the western world are only the basics. Things to teach a child the things they may need to know to become successful critical thinking adults. University is then where people go to learn more. University is not mandatory, it is a choice because those extra bits of learning aren't necessary. More than that, though, by the time people are of age for university they are generally eighteen, adults, and no longer subject to government rules about education.

If people want to learn more, they don't even have to go to university anymore. If people genuinely want to learn more on any subject, history included, there are public libraries in every city. For the people who don't have a computer and internet access at home, they can still have access through library computers. There are no limits to what people can learn if they want to. There are only limits to how much you can teach children who are required to learn in a specific time frame.

There are plenty of fascinating historical figures and a whole lot of them have had biographies written on them, films made of them, documentaries, and certainly internet pages full of them. I have certainly never felt under-educated on historical figures and enjoy reading interesting bits on them.

[TxCat]

I...guess I am the exception rather than the rule. Not only did I recognize the wonan, but I knew her history.

I have an insatiable need to touch history and to learn about other places all over the world. My minor in college was Middle Eastern history.

As to the topic: I think it's a case of the ignorant teaching the ignorant combined with an inflated sense of position and importance in the world. When I was in high school, they did teach world history. However, when I mentioned that as a military dependent I had lived in some of those places he called me a liar. In fact, he denied that West Germany, Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Panama existed.

You can't teavh world history without a global mindset and here in the US at least we don't have it.

[wolfeyedangel]

I've been to a few countries myself, TxCat, and average people are average people the world over. I don't think ANY culture has a true 'global mindset' as a culture, rather than as individuals. It's likely to be more than a few generations before we get there as well. I've run into very, very few history teachers at any level that are that limited in their view, though the exceptions seem determined to work even harder to make up the difference.

To the specific topic at hand:
I also was roughly familiar with the woman, mind you only roughly. That area of the world is of sporadic interest to me.

The biggest problem with teaching history (and trying to learn about history) is not 'what do you you leave out' but 'what in the heck can you cram in?' To use a more modern example... you could spend a life time learning about just the US civil war, and even if you started when you were five and lived to be one hundred you would not learn everything there is to know about the civil war and the people living in the time and that is one tiny time frame in just one country in the world. The US is ONLY 237 years old if you measure from the declaration of Independence. It's only 230 years old if you measure from the Constitution's inception. (Where you measure that, or if you nudge it a little further into the 1780s, depends on quite a bit of history and your interpretations there of as well.) It would take lifetimes to learn everything worth knowing about the US... just from the Declaration forward.

Every country in the world has deep and detailed histories, and almost all of them have histories that pre-date the current country identifier. (There's a reason Ivan the Terrible, or as the Russians called him 'the Thunderous', was called the "The First Czar of All the Russias".) Back to the US for a moment. You have all the Native American tribes. Some cultures that died out and we only know about because they left buildings, others that we have records they left or other people left of them but aren't around to tell us their stories any more. Every continent except Antarctica has a deep and detailed history. There simply isn't enough time to teach /everything/. Most of the history teachers (not just people stuck teaching history) I know and have known try and include enough to inspire people to do their own research because it is simply impossible to teach everything. Most people in the US haven't heard of King Sejong of Korea or Admiral Yi Sun-Sin and his turtle boat Armada, or all the things that Ivan the Thunderous (see above) did before he went nuts and became a paranoid tyrant. Very little was taught in my school about Byzantium. Somalia's role in the trade routes in the middle ages were mentioned, the crusades were a passing note, not because they weren't important but because we were trying to cover 6,000 years of history in one school year.

We spent a year on the history of my state in school, one of the youngest states in the country, and still barely scratched the surface. There is so much out there, if you put something in you have to take something else out. I had a friend who NEVER learned about WWII in school... because she changed schools 4 times in high school and they always glossed over it as 'well you've already had this' or 'you'll get to this next year' when she hadn't and wouldn't. They had other things to cover so they left something out; something 'everyone' knows about. She didn't know any of it until some college friends took her aside and brought her up to speed. Every country is going to have their priorities. There are cases that can be made for so many things... there are events that should not be left out, unfortunately there are more of those than there is time to teach them all and everyone has a different opinion of who and what is important, so someone's important items are going to get left out.

[jcoop134]

I totally agree. I do both Ancient and Modern History at school and all we learn about is the events that occured in Europe and the US. We are completely ignoring other countries histories such as the Middle and Far East. I mean did you know that in the Victorian Era while everyone was dumping their sewage into the streets (gross) the Chinese have had plumbing, piping and septic tanks for centuries? I bet you all did not know that.

[MightyOak]

The biggest problem with teaching history (and trying to learn about history) is not 'what do you you leave out' but 'what in the heck can you cram in?' To use a more modern example... you could spend a life time learning about just the US civil war, and even if you started when you were five and lived to be one hundred you would not learn everything there is to know about the civil war and the people living in the time and that is one tiny time frame in just one country in the world. The US is ONLY 237 years old if you measure from the declaration of Independence. It's only 230 years old if you measure from the Constitution's inception. (Where you measure that, or if you nudge it a little further into the 1780s, depends on quite a bit of history and your interpretations there of as well.) It would take lifetimes to learn everything worth knowing about the US... just from the Declaration forward.

This is something of the point I was trying to make. The earth is billions of years old and even if you only count human history, that is thousands and thousands of years. No one can expect us to learn thousands of years of humanity in just twelve years of basic schooling. It just isn't possible. So the simple things are covered as best as can be managed and if or when people want to learn more on something in particular they have the freedom and opportunity to do that.

For me, I find that information being so easily attainable to be a wonderful blessing. People can choose to continue educating themselves long after they have been taught the rudiments on any subject, not just history. The information is free for anyone to grasp.

[wolfeyedangel]

I totally agree. I do both Ancient and Modern History at school and all we learn about is the events that occured in Europe and the US. We are completely ignoring other countries histories such as the Middle and Far East. I mean did you know that in the Victorian Era while everyone was dumping their sewage into the streets (gross) the Chinese have had plumbing, piping and septic tanks for centuries? I bet you all did not know that.

They also had a interesting little seismometer. It didn't keep long track but you could get an idea of direction and relative strength of an earthquake. They were also still doing footbinding on their women. Though, for the record, the first modern toilet was patented in the Victorian Era in england (1775), they had sewers both in England and in France (Seriously read the Hunchback of Notredame and the, I think, 70 pages describing the Paris sewers! You could practically map the things!) The issues in london was that in that era everything dumped into the Thames. (It is now a much, much cleaner waterway that it used to be.) You could probably get a doctorate in the history of plumbing in the Roman era alone much less everywhere else in the world. And you're only reinforcing my point: What do you put in? Most history classes don't talk about anybody's sewage. There's so much going and doing. My history courses did cover, roughly the middle east, the far East, Egypt, as well as early settlements in central and south america (though what would become the US proper was saved for the US history class to save space for other things). The more recent times the course progressed to the more it focused on Europe, usually excluding Russia. (I bet you didn't know Ivan the Terrible wasn't terrible until 1563, and that he introduced the printing press and quite a few other 'modernizations' as we'd consider them, to Russia.) The closer closer to modern times we got the more there was to know! The more certainty we can say X happened on Y date with Z effect. With that greater expanse of knowledge, there is a greater burden of choice. Do you concentrate on the things that are more immediately impacting your students? Or do you talk about things that are more far flung? What can you fit into a course for bored students who think history is idiotic? (That was at least half of every single highschool history class I ever sat through the percent in freshman level courses at college was higher.) What will spark their interest enough to go start finding out the rest of it?

@MightyOak: I was hoping to reinforce your point.

[Loop]

I'm going to be majoring in history next year, so I'm quite interested in your question. I've taken history throughout my high school career, and have a deep love for it. Taking it has also taught me one thing: you can't know all of it.

Think about it, we have the collected history of the world for thousands of years. Across the world different cultures have expanded, lived, died, and survived. The amount of information of such an infinite amount of people over such massive amounts of time is ridiculous. There's no way you can know everything.

We know the most about our own countries because that is what is most likely to benefit us in the future. It's better for me to know about John A. MacDonald and his policies than it is for me to know about the Greek pantheon. It's better for me to learn about Aboriginals and their lifestyle in Canada than it is for me to learn about Aboriginals in Australia. We are taught what is most likely to benefit us in some way, and to give us our base understanding. It's then up to us to continue on if we enjoy history or not. Just like we're taught basic math, but we aren't all expected to know advanced calculus.

The question of whether or not it's fair doesn't seem to be the proper one to me. I don't think fair is the correct word. Rather, is it harming our view of history. I can't say that it is. History is the study of change, and we study those most who made the most change. Zenobia was surely an interesting figure, but after reviewing a few articles on her, her impact was not a massive one. We can't compare her to figures like Augustus or Napoleon Bonaparte. She had a minor role in a minor civilization. That's why so few people know of her, in the big scheme of things she simply did little to change history.