| BFR said: Did any of your guys take a class like "Western Civilization" in high school? I did, and I loved that class. I loved learning about the Trojan War. Paris. Hector. Agamemnon. Achilles. The Trojan Horse. The Illiad. "Helen, the face that launched a 1000 ships" I also loved learning about the Persian Wars. Darius. Xerxes. Battle of Marathon. Battle of Thermopylae. Battle of Salamis. Battle of Plataea. Leonidas. Sparta. Athens. "Spartan, come back with your shield or on it" |
That was basically history as we got it in school, all about western (mostly ancient) civilization. The rest of the world were simply places to colonize.
And colonization was always presented as a positive, right from the Roman occupation. They brought organization and roads. The Mongol invasion of Europe 'shuffled' people around. The French occupation brought us surnames. The discovery of the Americas and later the far East bringing prosperity.
It's nice to always see the positives, yet only focusing on those, WW1 and WW2 were the first ones where there were actually negatives attached to history. But no criticism of the allied troops of course, fire bombing entire cities nor all the war crimes like starvation 'hunger plan' as a tactic. (Which is now in effect in Gaza) It was always black and white, no greys in history. And the aftermath was just about the cold war, nothing about the creation of the UN, international law, Geneva conventions.
There was a lot of scapegoating Russia for everything and it was until much later that I learned about the role Russia played in WW2. Of course many events happened after I went to school, and the Soviet Union was the biggest bad guy after Germany when I was growing up. How Russia went from ally in WW2 to lethal enemy in the Cold War was not taught though.
Geopolitics would be a good course for schools! (If objective of course) as well as world religions. Those are shaping our world as it is today. Yet also the most biased subjects.
