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History from a non Western perspective
kochspostulates
Posts: 3,067 Forum Member
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What is non Western perspective history like?
What do they teach us?
I've just watched BBC series and Andrew Marr mentioned that this history was from a Western perspective. I am Macanese in origin and have heard about history from more than one side, although live here so am more inclined to side with the West.
Has anyone else been taught non Western history?
What do they teach us?
I've just watched BBC series and Andrew Marr mentioned that this history was from a Western perspective. I am Macanese in origin and have heard about history from more than one side, although live here so am more inclined to side with the West.
Has anyone else been taught non Western history?
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How would they teach world history in a non imperialist country like Switzerland?
Back in about 2003 I was working in Malaysia and one of the guys I was working with was telling me that in his son's school they were doing a project about whether or not the WTC attacks were some kind of inside job or false-flag operation.
He reckoned (as did most of the guys I worked with) that it was a fairly common belief in Malaysia that this was the case and that schools were encouraging kids to consider it.
What does that have to do with anything
as conspiracy theories go -- it is probably the most daft one out there -- suprisingly though -- its the most believed one too lol
Diana on the other hand.....
just kidding
west end perspective
It really is. I remember the British empire being mentioned once or twice at secondary school, normally in a way that framed it as a neutral or positive. I remember having one RE lesson on the Amritsar massacre, but that was it. Move along, nothing to see here.
The result? Comments like "I wish we still had an empire", or "Nobody living under British control ever got hurt", or even "India should be grateful- they'd be nothing without us". Most of the people who say these things aren't warmongerers, or racists, or nationalists- they're just incredibly naive about what the empire was. They've been brought up to be.
Anyway... I remember being a kid and wondering why we always learnt the same history again and again (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Henry VIII, Victorians, World Wars). There were huge parts of the world which never seemed to get mentioned. I remember wondering why we never got taught about African, Asian, Eastern European or South American history- those were big places, there must have been something going on there.
It would be great to broaden the amount of history which gets taught in schools. Not only would learning about a lot of different places be more interesting for children, but I feel they would really benefit from knowing that important things happened in every country, not just their own.
When I did GCSE History (four years ago now) we did all about the Wall Street crash, Great Depression, WWI, WWII and apartheid in South Africa.
I contemplated A-level History which was mostly about the 1917 revolutions in Russia, inter-war Britain (including the Irish independence in 1922) and some more stuff about America.
Not a thing on the Empire though.
I went to several different schools so covered quite a broad range of topics in history. From memory:
Aztecs
Slave trade
Industrial revolution
Ancient Egypt
Tudors
WWII
Apartheid
Civil rights
Suffragettes
Magna Carta
Don't recollect ever learning about the British Empire, but I'm pretty sure the subject is taught comprehensively in the former colonies, where it actually matters.
I never learned about those places either at school and only learned about Middle Eastern History and South Asian history because I did RE at school where we learned about all the major religions in the world. I don't know much about South American history at all.
Actually - it's very possible for primitive tribes and societies to pass only many thousands of years of oral history and tradition between generations; look at Australian aboriginals, for instance...and a lot of this is being recorded and studied now.
Both my daughters were offered the same syllabus as this.
The idea so depressed them they moved schools for A level and did classical studies instead. And that school also offered "early english/modern" (not sure of the title) history which covered the Tudors/Civil war ect.
I don't know why so few schools offer an alternative syllabus when a lot of children though interested in history, are sick to the back teeth of studying the 20C.
Same as anything.....MONEY!
Textbooks, particularly history ones, are frighteningly expensive; when i was at school, one of the alternatives on the syllabus for us was Marlborough and 18th century England...but even THEN, in the late '70s/early '80s, the main textbook was £25!!! Imagine enough of those for a couple of classes...
Anyone who thinks their education should stop with what they studied in school wasn't really learning the real lesson.
Because if whatever interest there is in history isn't cultivated properly, early enough....it flounders early
It's also hard enough to keep kids interested in the process of learning...there's just SO many other fun things to grab their attention
Somehow *I* survived it to keep on being interested in history...and yet really really disliked school and the process of learning.
Which is why there is a move in the US, against massive pressure from the textbook cartel, towards open source textbooks. This is an area that is in desperate need of massive disruption.
There's been little coverage of this week's Chinese leadership transition, compared to the blanket coverage of the US presidential election. My thread was a nil pointer
They all left writing or heiroglyphs
I think that's important because there's almost no history of the north american indians.............maybe they didn't leave much in the way of written materials
what 'history' there is tends to be archeology rather than history
yeah..............I did read your thread but was surprised there was no red hot debate about who was going to win..........
you know, the forum divided and all that..............;)