I think I got a fairly good teaching of history. I was taught to think critically of history. For example,

Wikipedia teaches that Augustus was the first Emperor of Rome and the founder of the Roman Empire. This is grossly inaccurate as the Romans began using imperial propaganda hundreds of years before Augustus, during the reign of Cato the Elder; Roman stories tell us that Empire was an inherent part of Roman culture from the foundation of Rome; and the city of Rome began its expansion several hundred years before when it began conquering Etruscan cities.
Second, the throne of “Emperor” evolved drastically throughout Roman history, it neither began nor ended with Augustus. The title “Imperator” from which Emperor was derived was originally a temporary title, but by the time of Sulla (decades before Augustus) it became clear that whoever held it could effectively keep it - Julius Caesar proved this. But “Imperator” wasn’t really the title of importance, it was just a name. What was really important was the “auctoritas” of Augustus - but again, this was a position that had begun long before Augustus and would continue to evolve long after. The aforementioned Sulla battled with Marius over that position, after the destabilize of the balance of powers was levelled against the balance of powers in the Roman Republic. It evolved in as far back as Scorpio and Cato the Elder, about 200 years before Augustus.

As another note, many believe the Senate = the Republic. This isn’t true, the Republic was simply the governing bodies and offices that replaced the Monarchy, and the Imperial courts were technically a part of that. What broke was the balance of powers, and those broke long before Augustus, and would continue to transition to different states long after. Historians call Augustus the first Emperor of the Principate because he was the first person of power to include “Princess” among his titles - which again, is a title that didn’t begin with Augustus, it is more a title to designate to the most dominant member of the oldest people in the Senate - and again, had nothing to do with his power.

If there was one title of Augustus’s that was linked to his power, it was that he was the heir of Caesar - and this remained the case for the duration of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and afterward became an honorific title.

Speaking of Marius and Caesar. Marius established reforms that would revolutionize the Roman military into its structure and procedures that would remain relatively similar until Diocletian and Constantine changed them again about 400 years later. Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey had already taken control of the state, and ruled by aucoritas no less than Augustus. They revamped the Empire by putting provinces with lots of legions under their perpetual control, while the rest of the senate had fewer. Brutus and Augustus continued that tradition, and Brutus was not fighting for something different, he was jealous that Caesar had given everything to Augustus - and in fact might have been his motive for assassination - our current image is somewhat polluted by modern interpretations of Shakespearebeginning during the Enlightenment and German history where the idea of an autocrat overthrowing a democratically elected government in a somewhat tyrannical abuse of the system became popular.

Anyway, point of the story, history is a story of the past told to be interpreted by the present culture in ways that make sense. It is mostly inaccurate. History is a theoretical examination of factual information and evidence. There are different ways of interpreting it:

Traditionally history is interpreted as a sort of “big man” Eurocentric view driving everything. But in in the last century two schools of thought have come to dominate - Marxism (not to be confused with the Americanized term that means socialism) and Annales schools - they instead turn to a much wider view of history, turning to a more global view which expands as much vertically as it does horizontally: both expand on what contributes to history, and include technological innovations and advancements, as well as all classes of people. So now the idea of “Roman Empire ended in 476” isn’t the academic view, as we look at how Roman culture persisted for hundreds of years more and evolved into the more recognizable cultures of the modern era during the Middle Ages. Marxism and Annales differ in that Marxism asserts that humans will seek out their best case scenario, and therefore conflicts and advancements lead to a general trend of social equalization. The Annales and Marxist schools are both primarily focused on the modern era of history, which is not the same as the colloquial “modern” but rather is a time that began in the late Middle Ages, most stick it to the rise of Florence under Cosimo D’Medici - but this (again) is playing into a bit of a propagandists trap - Germany and Italy both had modernity in certain locations during the Middle Ages. Again, these views are more current since the political entities we look at now are nations and cultures.

What is modernism?
In short: pre-modernism is the view that the world is declining from a more golden and pure past. Modernism is that the future is more golden and that we are advancing. Marxism is a form of modern history while the Annales school can be both modern and post modern. Post-modern being that states of society are subjective interpretations of symbols (which includes abstract values like “progress”) - that’s my short dirty version.


So anyway, history is a skill as much as it is data and interpretations of that data. It is not so much about accuracy, if history was accurate, most people would be very confused in the same they’d be in learning a subject in 50 different languages. The versions of stories we tell may cover the same events, but the meaning will be much different and the idea of Augustus as the first Emperor of Rome and the founder of the Empire would be absurd to the Romans. But some of our recent interpretations have actually swung things back closer to Roman thinking - we don’t see 476 as a hard cutoff date for the Roman Empire anymore - similarly, people living in Spain and Italy in 500 AD and 576, even 676 would still consider themselves subjects of the Roman Empire, even if their direct leader was a Germanic King - as the Germanic Kings were generally seen as a sort of a Roman magistrate, especially among the Franks and Goths (post-Alaric).

Just to hammer that point home, the label of “Emperor” is an anachronism, a modern term. When we talk about Roman Emperors, we’re using a title that originated in the French language - and one that we attach meaning to that wasn’t accurate of Roman society. If we look at Augustus as Emperor, we’ll see someone closer to Barrack Obama in terms of power than Czar Peter the Great. Of course, Constantine was much closer to Peter the Great, a jewelled and crowned ruler who subjects bowed before. Czar and Kaiser - and all their variants are based on the Roman word Caesar.

And that is what you call a ramble =)

Not sure tbh, but I know in Tassie most people avoided public schools because they were not great and back then private school wasn't expensive. Mine was only $3000 a year lol.

On the mainland, people seem to rave about public school being great, but no one can tell me why lol. The one thing they say is my kids don't need to learn religion, but TBH i didn't mind the religion classes, it actually helped open up the mind more about how religion has controlled people's lives.

You can be racist, but also have strong ethics.
I wouldn't be surprised if his attitude was simply born out of frustration... Because I would imagine working with people who are unable to speak the same language as yourself would be rather frustrating.

I live in rural Australia right now and honestly, racism isn't something I see very often, or even homophobia... And this is a very conservative safe seat for the liberal party.

Nope. pakistani here and they don't teach us about the controversial way my province was forced to join Pakistan or how Pakistan also has blame in what's happening to Kashmir and not just India or how the army treats minorities or how the people of the country mistreated minorities or about our role in radicalizing mujahideen or our role in why my people fight the central government and army. They also don't teach how prominent the army was during even democratic rule or how the army rigs elections here. They also made Bhutto seem like a bad leader and villain while overemphasizing the good done by Ayub Khan. They don't teach the histories of each individual province which are very important. They don't teach any history about the major cities even though most are historic spanning 100s or years or history, if not more. They don't teach about the bad and they don't go in depth on anything really. Basically a lot of history omitted is how shitty our army is and how shitty our intelligence agency is.

Brazil here. Kinda.

So our history books begin on the year 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese here. No talk about the natives that were here first or how they even got here, but okay. Then it's fine for a few centuries (other than a slight whitewashing of it all), then it's really mediocre for the 20th century; I don't know if it happens everywhere, but I really only learned about the good parts of each government and not really about the bad parts (other than the military dictatorship, of course, you can't really sugarcoat that). Overall, though, I feel it's mostly taught as something like a fairy tale, something that happened long ago and has no bearing on current events and our culture. I only got to understand the consequences of our history on sociology class in high school.

How old was the guy? There is a chance he though he was trying to be funny by having a bit of cheeky old aussie banter, which to us younger generations comes off as racist.

Yeah I should probably clarify that even in my hometown there were a lot of lovely people and racism/homophobia certainly weren't universal, just notably more prevalent than in the city.

Pakistanis are very racist as well. And when you say race in Pakistan, it means something completely different as we talk about tribes and sub-tribes and alot of Pakistanis have opinions about different groups of people and they are adamant that all of the people in that group are like that. One weird example is that many Pakistanis think French people are not very clean and use perfumes to hide their stench. I know that's stupid but it's what they think. It's not as prevalent in bigger cities but still there. Another weird one is that all Chinese people eat dogs and donkeys. It's all really stupid.

After seeing the thread I came to a conclusion that what was previously believe passed here that USA school usually only focus on USA history and geography seem a lot more widespread and suddemly brazilian schools don't seem so bad anymore.

As I said somewhere else, they don't delve into provincial history a whole lot and considering Pakistan is an especially artificial nation(note that many nations are artificial essentially) so the history depends a lot on the region. They also don't teach history of our cities many of which are historical going back 100s of years. They do teach a lot of pre Pakistan Indian history which is somewhat connected to the provinces but not directly. They talk a lot about British Raj and Mughal raj and stuff, but they don't talk about Balochistan's history or sindh's history or kpk's  history. Punjab is linked with India a lot so they essentially talk about it by accident. They do lie about a lot of stuff and propagandize a lot as well. 

And I think the Pakistan stuff is important and politics is very important to history. I would be ok if there was another topic called political history that we learned but no such thing is taught, so all the responsibility lies on Pakistan studies (the name of the history course after like 7th-8th grade).