Lies they told you in history class

Polite Sage

New member
Feb 22, 2011
198
0
0
"Us Finns were never allied with Nazis and never gave them Jews or political prisoners for torture, no sir and we never held any concentration camps. Also, we didn't start the Continuation War."
Naturally, this meeting never happened.

It's like learning Finnish history from scratch again. HOW OLD were the books we used in grade school?
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
flatten_the_skyline said:
The told us that Napoleon kicked pretty much ass in the beginning. He was FRENCH, dude! ;-)
He was Corsican. That barely qualifies as French ;)

But in all seriousness, the French are bashed way too much. They did an outstanding job during WWI and pretty much dominated the continent before that (the Franco-Prussian war notwithstanding).
 

Tiger Sora

New member
Aug 23, 2008
2,220
0
0
rayen020 said:
Completely skips the war of 1812. America tried to invade Canada, were pushed back by an army much smaller. And we burned the White House. I can see why they wouldn't want to teach that since they need to tell every child America is #1 and never loses. But the past is taught so mistakes arn't made again.
 

flatten_the_skyline

New member
Jul 21, 2009
97
0
0
C. Cain said:
flatten_the_skyline said:
The told us that Napoleon kicked pretty much ass in the beginning. He was FRENCH, dude! ;-)
He was Corsican. That barely qualifies as French ;)

But in all seriousness, the French are bashed way too much. They did an outstanding job during WWI and pretty much dominated the continent before that (the Franco-Prussian war notwithstanding).
I stand corrected. Though Corsica was claimed by the french back then and Napoleon was given french citizenship if I get this right.

And what can I say? I live in a country that started and lost two world wars... It's just too good a pun to ignore.

BTW: I hereby apologize for my nations conducts during zee woar!

WTF, there was a footnote in my captcha...
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
flatten_the_skyline said:
C. Cain said:
flatten_the_skyline said:
(...)
I stand corrected. Though Corsica was claimed by the french back then and Napoleon was given french citizenship if I get this right.

And what can I say? I live in a country that started and lost two world wars... It's just too good a pun to ignore.

BTW: I hereby apologize for my nations conducts during zee woar!

WTF, there was a footnote in my captcha...
Eh, nationality is a bit tricky anyway.

I assume most Austrians would claim Mozart was Austrian. But during his time Salzburg was part of Bavaria (IIRC). But then again, I already divulged my thoughts on Austrians and Germans.
 

Brown_Coat117

New member
Oct 22, 2010
112
0
0
I guess that this isn't a lie per say but it would have been nice to have covered the US embargo of Japan that lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor in class.
 

RandV80

New member
Oct 1, 2009
1,507
0
0
I can't really think of anything, being Canadian we don't really teach history the same way Americans do and I ended up with a great social studies/history teacher through high school, to the point that even though I'm more inclined towards math it became my favourite class by the end.

One thing that really got imparted on me was that he taught us to recognize bias and always devoted a class to current events, where we'd watch the news for an hour (CBC's The National I think) pausing us for notes and quiz us on it next week. When the Kosovo crisis occurred, we were given an assignment to watch news coverage from US networks, go online to find news coverage from the Serbs side, and write a report contrasting the two. Now that's how history should be taught.
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
Brown_Coat117 said:
I guess that this isn't a lie per say but it would have been nice to have covered the US embargo of Japan that lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor in class.
May I ask how they explained the attack, then?
 

ckam

Make America Great For Who?
Oct 8, 2008
1,618
0
0
Asia is a very unimportant country, which is why we'll skim over it during only World War 2. They are not important at all.
 

RuralGamer

New member
Jan 1, 2011
953
0
0
Strangely enough we got a pretty balanced history lessons, except the fact that they didn't teach us about the dirty things the Allies got up to in WW1. When it came to India 1850s-Independence and Partition, our teacher gave us the cold hard facts and said "Yeah, basically they hated us because we were jerks".

Oh and she tried to convince us Edith Cavell was a martyr for humanitarian efforts; she was a Red Cross nurse and therefore supposed to be neutral, but violated that neutrality by trying to surreptitiously aid the allied war effort.
 

Brown_Coat117

New member
Oct 22, 2010
112
0
0
C. Cain said:
Brown_Coat117 said:
I guess that this isn't a lie per say but it would have been nice to have covered the US embargo of Japan that lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor in class.
May I ask how they explained the attack, then?
Well they really didn't explain the why just that it happend. So like I said not a lie per say
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
Brown_Coat117 said:
Well they really didn't explain the why just that it happend. So like I said not a lie per say
And noone questioned it? I mean it's kind of a big deal. Also, technically it is a lie, a lie by omission. oO
 

Treblaine

New member
Jul 25, 2008
8,682
0
0
First world War - English (UK) curriculum History.

ANY MENTION of military tactics only only ever considers how stupid and callous they are and that it was a class struggle of rich upper class officers who never saw the front lines and it was only the poor plebs who died pointlessly and when you went "over the top" it was certain death with no possibility of success.

Yes, we actually had a Trial for Lord Kitchener! Yes, we got a 13 year old who didn't pay attention to defend his honour long after he was dead. Needless to say, the curriculum guided us to conclude he was an enemy of socialism simultaneously stupid and evil.

Since then I've learned our School curriculum was woefully misleading and clearly for a political anti-war bias that took every chance to shit all over the military establishment with not a single argument in their favour.

Classic deception being:

"soldiers ordered to walk - not run - slowly into the machien guns. Huh, those posh toff general were just trying to get our boys killed"

Bullshit.

While there were orders to "advance at a steady walking pace" this was vital for the rolling-barrage of artillery.

The importance of artillery is so underplayed in the Curriculum, it only ever covers briefly how expensive, and dangerous they were yet at such shortage, it makes them seem like a red-herring. In fact it was the move to large-calibre, fast firing gun with high-explosive warheads that were finally able to break the trench system as high explosives (unlike the ealier black-powder warheads) really could blast barbed wire and anti-tank defences to pieces so that tanks and people could go right over them.

But this rolling barrage advanced at a very gradual pace, it was VITAL that the soldiers not "run into it".

it was also important that the solders advance across a broad front. What happened earlier in the war was supposedly "logical" they would focus on cutting one hole in the barbed wire, but then as an entire platoon tried to get through this one bottleneck the machine guns would cut them to pieces in this one gap. To defeat the trench defences you must deploy overwhelming force across a broad front in perfectly combined forces.

But advancing over a wide front, with the ENTIRE barbed-wire defences destroyed then the machine guns then had to sweep too wide an area, and they were being shot at from too many different angles.

One thing the Curriculum COMPLETELY FAILED to do was emphasise how by 1918 trench warfare tactics had been made obsolete thanks to advancements in artillery, tanks and infrastructure.

The problem is the curriculum would cherry pick accounts from all over the war to concoct a picture of almost manufactured incompetence. As if the high command literally were just retards, as if that was just typical for 1910's for people to be that stupid.

The problem was the curriculum seemed to have an overwhelming bias to cover that the war was stupid IN EVERY ASPECT of it's conduct and to never address real military tactics. it seemed to be afraid that if the military leaders were shown as in any way competent it might encourage the generation of schoolchildren to endorse repeat of such a conflict. Which I think is intellectually dishonest.
 

thevillageidiot13

New member
Sep 9, 2009
295
0
0
wilsontheterrible said:
To be honest I'm starting to think the only solution is non-profit private education. Keep the public shools for the poor but insitute a voucher system to allow parents to send their children where they feel their needs will be best met.

The straw the broke the camels back was the current union effort to repeal a program in Arizona to establish a student savings fund to send disabled children to private facilities equipped to handle their special needs. Public school teachers are not trained for these kinds of disabilities and the fact they would try to defund the program speaks volumes about their intent. It's not about students, it's about teachers.

Non-profit private achievement oriented schools would exist for the benefit of students, educators, and the community. The keys to any successful, service-oriented industry are competition, customer service, and brand identification. The current system lacks all of these and we all suffer for it.

Because honestly, per-student spending has doubled in the last decade but quality has either remained the same or dropped. I have no faith in the public school system.
I concur entirely. In the last decade, this damned War on Terror has consumed outrageous amounts of taxpayer money. By one estimate, we'd be able to provide full-ride undergraduate scholarships (4 years' worth) to 40 million individuals, if we had chosen to spend the money there instead.

The current system is very much broken. Many individuals (ranging from the Black Panthers to Howard Zinn to Malcolm X) recognized that what is taught to our youth today in "History classes" is closer to pro-American, pro-capitalist, pro-Western propaganda rather than a true History, which is meant to inform, educate, and instill a sense of identity while also enhancing our understanding of social justice.

I, myself, was blessed to go to a very generous, progressive/liberal Catholic private school that was more than generous with its financial aid money. In fact, since the start of the Recession, it has actually quadrupled the amount of financial aid they've given to students (instead of cutting back, as one might expect).
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
Treblaine said:
(...)

The importance of artillery is so underplayed in the Curriculum, it only ever covers briefly how expensive, and dangerous they were yet at such shortage, it makes them seem like a red-herring. In fact it was the move to large-calibre, fast firing gun with high-explosive warheads that were finally able to break the trench system as high explosives (unlike the ealier black-powder warheads) really could blast barbed wire and anti-tank defences to pieces so that tanks and people could go right over them.

(...)

it was also important that the solders advance across a broad front. What happened earlier in the war was supposedly "logical" they would focus on cutting one hole in the barbed wire, but then as an entire platoon tried to get through this one bottleneck the machine guns would cut them to pieces in this one gap. To defeat the trench defences you must deploy overwhelming force across a broad front in perfectly combined forces.

(...)

But advancing over a wide front, with the ENTIRE barbed-wire defences destroyed then the machine guns then had to sweep too wide an area, and they were being shot at from too many different angles.

(...)
I always thought shrapnel was used to cut wire barriers, not HE. Oh well, live and learn.
 

Treblaine

New member
Jul 25, 2008
8,682
0
0
C. Cain said:
flatten_the_skyline said:
The told us that Napoleon kicked pretty much ass in the beginning. He was FRENCH, dude! ;-)
He was Corsican. That barely qualifies as French ;)
And Hitler was Austrian (yet led Germany in WWII).

Stalin was from Georgia (yet led mostly Russian people in WWII).

There are so many examples from history of leaders leading people from a completely different place from where they were born and grew up. The point is people can feel they belong to countries for many and various reasons and factors, surely being made emperor of France makes Napoleon a French Citizen?

Surely Arnold Schwarzenegger is an American after making so many American Action movies (even though he still has that outrageous Austrian accent).
 

C. Cain

New member
Oct 3, 2011
267
0
0
Treblaine said:
C. Cain said:
flatten_the_skyline said:
The told us that Napoleon kicked pretty much ass in the beginning. He was FRENCH, dude! ;-)
He was Corsican. That barely qualifies as French ;)
And Hitler was Austrian (yet led Germany in WWII).

Stalin was from Georgia (yet led mostly Russian people in WWII).

There are so many examples from history of leaders leading people from a completely different place from where they were born and grew up. The point is people can feel they belong to countries for many and various reasons and factors, surely being made emperor of France makes Napoleon a French Citizen?

Surely Arnold Schwarzenegger is an American after making so many American Action movies (even though he still has that outrageous Austrian accent).
I was jesting, my friend. As I said, nationality is tricky. Also: I already addressed the whole German/Austrian thing a few posts back.
 

thevillageidiot13

New member
Sep 9, 2009
295
0
0
mabrookes said:
immortalfrieza said:
Dimitriov said:
immortalfrieza said:
Glass Joe the Champ said:
So guys, what kind of lies, if any, did you learn in your history class?
That history class is important or even slightly relevant to anyone besides historians and people that work in museums. Basically, that history class has any justification for it's existence whatsoever is the lie.

As a fun exercise let's assume you aren't in fact trolling. Please defend your statement.

I ask you to defend it because, as the existence of History classes implies, you seem to be making a claim that goes against what the majority of people believe. You may be right, if so please explain how. Or more likely you were taught History poorly and don't understand the true, and very important, reasons for studying the past: in which case you have my sympathy as that is not entirely your fault.
I'll try to defend it, but it'll be hard to do so without history buffs everywhere coming out of the woodwork to tell me that I'm full of it. I should first clarify that I enjoy learning about history, I watch the history channel all the time and spent much of my youth reading about Dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and so on for my own entertainment. I just see history classes as an incredibly bad waste of time to the vast majority of people.

I'll go more in depth as to why I think history class is pointless:

To start with, how many people do you know or even think is likely to get any sort of job (the entire point of school BTW) that even slightly involves history? How many of them already have? Compared to the entire planet's workforce a pretty miniscule amount I'll bet. Of that small amount, how many of those people do you think learned anything of actual worth to their professions in grade school, most of that comes from college and simple independent research.

A common defense of history class is the phrase "those who do not learn from the mistakes history are doomed to repeat it." However, this phrase fails to take into account that most people, for example, are not going to find themselves in situations to which knowing when the French Revolution happened and why is going to be in any way relevant. That particular case is very unlikely even if you live in France. If they insist on making people go through history classes the very least they could do is teach subjects that are relevant to modern society, not things that are anywhere from decades to millenia old.

History classes are, in my opinion, just another one of the largely useless subjects and classes that are taught in basic school, and that should be phased out in favor of ones that are, and the money saved from doing so be put towards allowing everyone to get a college education without having to pay through the a!^ for it.
You failed at the very beginning which makes the rest of the post somewhat pointless. The point of school is not just to get a job (I can't imagine how bad the world would be if we reach that point), it is to learn life skills in general - from that then we should have equipped the child to be able to study further, go into work or just improve the world in some way by contributing (which does not have to be a job, a concept you obviously do not understand).

As for the subject, history requires more of a mix of writing, comprehension and critical though/analysis skills than any other subject (because of its application, I would suggest more than any English course). Even if the child never remembers any of the history, the skills learnt (assuming they bother to actually try) are extremely valuable, and wouldn't be possible without the unique potential of learning history.
I might add that many super-progressive historians (see: Howard Zinn and Huey Newton) saw the power of history as a tool for either social oppression or social justice. For example, in the United States, where history (up until you're around 16 years old, at least) is very pro-white-American, the African-American population often lacks a true sense of identity outside of "we descended from slaves freed by Lincoln," and many leaders in the Civil Rights Movement worked to give minority races in America their own place within United States History, because they felt that having a sense of identity would empower them, and, in turn, help pull them out of their current socio-economic situations. After all, when the U.S. tried to brainwash Native Americans to make them more "white", where did they start? They banned Native American languages and taught ultra-pro-white-American histories in schools for Native American children.

TL;DR: Many progressive historians don't study history just to learn about the past, but also because it is empowering, and a failure to learn it is essentially self-oppression.
 

Brown_Coat117

New member
Oct 22, 2010
112
0
0
C. Cain said:
Brown_Coat117 said:
Well they really didn't explain the why just that it happend. So like I said not a lie per say
And noone questioned it? I mean it's kind of a big deal. Also, technically it is a lie, a lie by omission. oO
Well obviously I questioned because I took that time to know.

The thing about schools is that they have to start teaching from somewhere. Yes I would have liked if they would have mentioned the embargo on Japan. How do you explain the embargo on Japan when you don't explain their own brutal empire building, how they went from detaining German prisoners in WW1 to Nazi allies pre-WW2 and on and on, and how do you cram all that information into a limited time with many student who learn differently and at a different pace. I don't view it as a lie omission because because not covering the embargo didn't really change any of the fact that they taught about the attack or the result (US entering WW2.)