Question to non-Americans

[Flilix]

sc94597 said:

Flilix said:

Belgian here. Of course history classes in secondary school have a lot of simplifications and perhaps some minor mistakes. But I'm not aware of any really notable mistakes or propaganda. Belgium as a country is not that relevant in our history, since we were not independent until 1830, and these last 190 years are only covered at the end of secondary school (5th year is French Revolution up to World War 1, 6th year is everything after WW1).

So you never learned about the atrocities committed by Leopold II? 

Well, I got a Belgian history course at university where there was a chapter on the colony. I don't remember whether or not I learned it in secondary school as well. It could be that we didn't, but we skipped over more important stuff as well. It could be argued that Leopold II's Congo is a notable part of Belgian history, but it could also be argued that it actually wasn't all that relevant (because these things happened on a different continent, also because they had little influence on anything else that we'd learn about, and also because the colony was privately owned by the king and had no ties to Belgium).

We did extensively analyse the song We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel in the 6th year, in which the murder of Patrice Lumumba was mentioned.