Question to non-Americans

[Eagle367]

Ka-pi96 said:

Eagle367 said:

No I was talking about people from the new world aka The Americas plus people from Asia and Africa and Oceania. It's sad that even our history is only plagued with eurocentric views because we were colonies of some European kingdom in the past. We aren't taught about the great leaders, philosophers, poets, scientists, etc but we do learn about Newton, Plato, Shakespeare, etc. I would love to learn about history from all over the world in our schools, of course with more focus on our native lands. I learned more about some of the greats from other regions after school. There are a great many things that happened outside Europe like the arabic-indian numerals, algebra, a lot of research in all sorts of fields, great poetry and philosophy, etc.

The first man to discover how our eyes perceive light was not a European but rather a guy named Ibne-Al-Haytham. A lot of people knew about the world being a sphere before some European did. Ibne-Batuta travelled the world and was actually a great adventurer and role model unlike Columbus. There are so many great writers in Japan like Osamu Dazai and Ryonosuke, Odasaku, etc. Al-Jazari was a great inventor and his Book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices is something more people should know about. A lot of weird things are said about Al-Ghazali but he was a great thinker and should be taught about regardless of whether you're Muslim or not. Mansa Musa is regarded as the richest man in history so much so that when he went for Hajj, wherever he stopped, the economy of the place changed entirely. A many things were happening in Africa before the Europeans that we don't learn about like the kingdom of kush. I can go on and on but I am still learning about these people and I am sadly not knowledgeable as I should be. That's why it's sad that it's so eurocentric.

Well most of the people in the Americas are of European origin, the vast majority if you consider partial European ancestry too.

I don't think a lot of the things you mentioned should be in history class full stop. Indian numerals, algebra etc. should be in maths class. Poetry & writers in literature class (which should also be cancelled completely because literature is boring and teaching kids poetry should be considered child abuse!).

I would like a lot of the other history, I know of Mansa Musa for example and he (and the Mali empire) certainly seem like they'd be interesting), but I also think it should be in optional/additional classes. The focus during regular education should absolutely be national history. In most cases there isn't even enough time to cover national history in the amount of school history classes you do, so if you can't even do all of your own history then history from other places should definitely be extra later on, rather than further limiting the amount of national history that's taught. So on that basis I'd agree that countries such as yours should have minimal, if any, European history, but it should still be important for European countries, or former European colonies.

Edit: Oh and Shakespeare was in English literature class, rather than history class. Hence why I think other writers should be in literature class too. But it was the worst class ever so I'd rather it just get abolished completely!

I wasn't strictly talking about history class. I was talking about the entire structure of classes that involve history in any way e.g literature, politics, world history, maths, etc. Also those people didn't know how to stay in their own region so most of the world has been a colony at some point

DonFerrari said:

Eagle367 said:

No I was talking about people from the new world aka The Americas plus people from Asia and Africa and Oceania. It's sad that even our history is only plagued with eurocentric views because we were colonies of some European kingdom in the past. We aren't taught about the great leaders, philosophers, poets, scientists, etc but we do learn about Newton, Plato, Shakespeare, etc. I would love to learn about history from all over the world in our schools, of course with more focus on our native lands. I learned more about some of the greats from other regions after school. There are a great many things that happened outside Europe like the arabic-indian numerals, algebra, a lot of research in all sorts of fields, great poetry and philosophy, etc.

The first man to discover how our eyes perceive light was not a European but rather a guy named Ibne-Al-Haytham. A lot of people knew about the world being a sphere before some European did. Ibne-Batuta travelled the world and was actually a great adventurer and role model unlike Columbus. There are so many great writers in Japan like Osamu Dazai and Ryonosuke, Odasaku, etc. Al-Jazari was a great inventor and his Book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices is something more people should know about. A lot of weird things are said about Al-Ghazali but he was a great thinker and should be taught about regardless of whether you're Muslim or not. Mansa Musa is regarded as the richest man in history so much so that when he went for Hajj, wherever he stopped, the economy of the place changed entirely. A many things were happening in Africa before the Europeans that we don't learn about like the kingdom of kush. I can go on and on but I am still learning about these people and I am sadly not knowledgeable as I should be. That's why it's sad that it's so eurocentric.

Again, most of the history outside of eurocentric and the topics covered for the non-eurocentric is what survived and had most impact in the world. There isn't much on the history of let's say congo or nepal that would really be relevant to anyone that isn't from there.

Sorry but I disagree completely. Many of the Europeans we study learned from people all over the world. All of it survived and ad influence in the modern world. It didn't just disappear. It's what you choose to learn. And the most impact thing is a bit ludicrous. It would seem that way if you only learn the eurocentric view which is a result of your education I guess. But the more history you learn, the more you realise there are a lot of holes in the eurocentric view and the more you realize how wrong your statement is.