CoH is a closet Kamala supporter! I knew it!
How should history be taught in high school?
- Thread starter BradStevens
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She’s good at a party, I’ll give her that.CoH is a closet Kamala supporter! I knew it!
She would be the greatest ED of a local urban league in history
She's attended two separate sorority functions since she became the presumptive nominee. She seems like one of those people that can't quite let go of her college days.
Probably not a bad plan. Insulate her from substance which she can’t do. Portrays her as high energy and young contrasted with the rambling old sour puss with headlines that he thinks he’s better looking. Fing old idiot
I am not at all meaning to in any way doubt the scientific method, big fan. But a large part of our achievement is that I think advancement is geometric. Advancement was slow early because we didn't have other advancements to build on. An example, once we developed fire we could then do many things that were previously impossible, fire led to many more advancements. It took humanity a long time to get to the point that we had enough things figured out to see the pace of today. No way Egypt could have ever done that. Don't discount the pyramids, they were quite an engineering marvel.
That’s fine. But why didn’t China, a pretty much continuous society with a wealth of resources develop these things? India? The Persians and Ottomans? As you said, they had the lead at one point. What happened? These are questions that should be asked, aren’t they?
For some reason, people think it’s culturally biased to recognize that the West came to dominate world affairs in an outsized way for reasons outside slavery and colonization.
I think you should ask these questions and provide all the different theories (maybe in the final chapter/portion of the year after learning what actually happened). But the syllabus I posted and the loaded questions they developed sure seem to point to “answers” the faculty think you should reach.
Societies live and die. Note that neither Rome nor Greece are major powers today. Their successors are pretty weak in most areas. We base a lot of our modern Western ideals on them, so if they are superior why did they die out?
If the World Series were best of 10,001 games, and you popped in at game 487 and saw the score in the 7th was 14-2, it wouldn't be a good inference based on that solely that the team leading was going to win the series.
The west has had a lead, no idea if it stays that way any more than it did for Egypt, Rome, Ottomon. I mean look at the British Empire today vs 120 years ago. Decline.
You do need to read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Co mentioned inalienable rights, great, love the concept. But isn't it fair in the discussion to wonder why the citizens who were colonized didn't have inalienable rights? Nor slaves? Nor often women? Which for me means a great class can be built around comparing the West's strengths and weaknesses. It shouldn't be all doom and gloom, nor a rah-rah pep rally. the truth is the west contributed a lot of great things (elimination of smallpox might be the greatest quality of life advancement since sanitation), and we screwed things up. A class should be free to delve into both without a teacher suggesting one side completely outweighs the other. Let the kids learn and decide.
Strengths and weaknesses are comparative, relative to other societies.
Can you name a society in the 16th-19th centuries outside "the West" that abolished slavery, treated women as equals, or had morality or sympathy for a conquered or weaker (militarily) people? I don't think so (bigger than maybe a tribe or two?).
In fact, your use of those examples shows just how dominant Western morality and philosophy have become--for it is through western thought that the world has come to see slavery and inequality as evils or "weaknesses."
All this said, I'm fine with all these theories being taught--at the right time when a student has enough information to be able to think about these things intelligently. I don't think the vast majority of 14 year olds have that wherewithal.
@BradStevens marv I read it and enjoyed it but I think you can read the back cover and get the gist.
I know about it. I haven't read it, though.
Here's a counter:
How Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Distorts History
Jared Diamond has done a huge disservice to telling human history, distorting the role of domestication and agriculture in 'Guns, Germs, and Steel.'
www.livinganthropologically.com
I’ve seen that and I will tell you my history doesn’t extend much beyond the Wild West and that glorious frontier but there’s something that’s just common sensical about the thrust of the bookI know about it. I haven't read it, though.
Here's a counter:
How Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Distorts History
Jared Diamond has done a huge disservice to telling human history, distorting the role of domestication and agriculture in 'Guns, Germs, and Steel.'
I don't know that I know enough about all the other cultures, we didn't learn about India, China, Japan, etc, back in my youth. Zip, zero, nada. I do know from a long-ago college class that women were equal in Sumer.
Slavery is tricky. The US practiced a different form from almost the rest of the world, chattel slavery. Rome had a slave emperor, that could never have happened here. Do we get more negative points for taking a negative, slavery, and making it worse? But what you'll read in Guns, Germs, Steel, is that the West's ability to grow non-labor-intensive food greatly helped it in many ways. My guess is it contributed to slavery being eliminated. The South, with labor-intensive cotton, was the exception. I don't know that other empires ever had that luxury.
Liberal democracy, a great western invention, is still far from uniformly popular in the West. We see a lot of reactionary movements against it in its host countries. The idea that one's country needs a strongman to return it to some previous era is fairly common.
I know about it. I haven't read it, though.
Here's a counter:
How Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Distorts History
Jared Diamond has done a huge disservice to telling human history, distorting the role of domestication and agriculture in 'Guns, Germs, and Steel.'
I think that article is right about some of that book. My point is more that the use of domesticated plants that were not labor-intensive freed up a lot of Europeans for a lot of other things. People who could build things, or serve in armies. And as I note above, eliminated a huge need for slaves.
I believe Gladwell tackled this a bit differently. He suggested that in France the average farmer worked like 800 hours per year. Long winters and friendly crops made that possible. In China, the number was much higher, off memory, well over 2000 hours. He explains that rice farming required hard work and dedication, as does math. Which he uses to explain why the Chinese do so much better at math than the West. The idea that long hours make one successful is far more engrained in the East, whereas personal free time is much more engrained in the West.
That's just not true. Brazil and other places in the Americas had chattel slavery, too. And Brazil imported and had more slaves than the U.S. by a lot. And their working conditions and mortality rates were much worse, too.
Does this "absolve" the U.S.? No. But buying into the notion of exceptionalism for slavery is a trope of the current identitarian left in the U.S.
You kids, being taught about Brazil. Man times have changed.
The problem with chattel slavery in the US and identity politics comes from BOTH sides. We have people who demand their forefathers who fought to keep chattel slavery legal demand their forefathers have statues built and cared for on the public dime. Yet there are a lot of people here I have trouble convincing that isn't a good idea. I don't care on private property, and they are fine in cemeteries and battlefields. But having them in front of a courthouse, how is that not identity politics?
Slavery came to the new world as an effect of the devine right of kings. Slavery ended because of the fundamentals of natural law. Lincoln (and others) mentioned this often.
Slavery may have ended that way in 20 more years. In reality, slavery ended because the AotP wore down the ANV in a bloody conflict.
Mostly agree. A large part of the justification for the bloody conflict was natural law.
No, they haven’t. That’s the problem.
They spent a month on the Haitian Revolution in 7th grade though (2 weeks on the American one).
no, "you kids" references you, not your kids. whippersnapper.
I learned it on my own. Within the last ten years.
Old man, look at my life
I’m a lot like you were
Sung about his gardener. It seemed to lose something once I learned it wasn't sung for his dad.
I don't think colonialism is why the West won, so to speak. I think it is the process they used to do it. The reasons the West won are varied and well worth talking about, but insisting on recognizing the realities of colonialism is not tantamount to ignoring those reasons.
I only got through the first 100 pages. Very interesting arguments, but incredibly repetitive.
Only problem with that argument is that the divergence between East and West doesn't really take off until the industrial revolution. If it really all goes back to which cereal grain your region was blessed with, you'd expect the West to slowly and steadily move ahead, but they didn't. Everyone sort of moved together until something happened between maybe 1600-1850 that set the West up for tremendous success.
Which version of the Magna Carta are you proposing?
Also, I'd be interested in your take on the Magna Carta's treatment of the"assizes of darrein presentment" and how that should be discussed in a high school class.
Evil...if your education and mindset equate sin with evil.Mass, good point.
Speaking of human nature, can you solve the age old debate for me about whether man is naturally good or evil
If one were to swallow the 'Live your Best Life" mantra, then sin doesn’t exist..
Therefore, neither good nor evil.
A couple of ideas for discussion purposes, as I have no real concept. Going back to the idea that technology builds on technology, it took a certain level before the advantage became real.
Second, most of Europe (and everywhere) had feudal governments which weren't designed to take advantage except against neighbor feudal systems. Feudalism died in the late 1400s and some time passed as everyone got a handle on the new world order (sorry, had to use that phrase).
I think agriculture played a role in what happened once feudalism/Dark Ages ended. I don't know that there was an event that caused the Dark Ages to end, any more than I can't think of an event that caused Islam to head into a Dark Age that can be argued is still existing. I think based on modern experience, societies get weary of change and retrench. In the early 1900s progressivism and populism fought, and it is rekindled now. It just seems to be some things run in cycles.
Japan, India, and China stayed feudal. Maybe the change in agriculture allowed Europe to leave feudalism sooner? I haven't looked at that to know if anyone considers it possible.
And yes, the Dark Ages are sometimes viewed too negatively. But it wasn't a time of great advancement even if not as bleak as sometimes portrayed.
And to be clear, I am not negative on the West. It is, sort of my own philosophy to stay middle. If someone were suggesting we have to teach the West was evil, I'd be arguing the other way (simply put, the amount of good done by preventing smallpox and polio is incalculable). I don't want to schools to be cheerleaders to doomsayers.
If somehow all that money you're talking about was given to the states, there is no guarantee they would spend it wisely and also no guarantee they would spend it at all on state-controlled education.
Several states we all know would hoard the formerly-education money to fund state tax reductions or build new highways or athletic facilities to get their party leaders reelected or implement morality classes instead of remedying funding deficiencies that presently exist in many places for education in math, science, art, music, literature, tech or language.
Your proposal has no guarantee of succeeding.
You trying to make mcm feel better?
Sorry...while they aren't into booze as much as previous generations, they are into other things more and they be having their fair share of sex.
It seems like you and Brad are both making one of the points that the teacher of that class was making that I gravitated towards. That history is made up of very little historical "fact" and a whole lot of historical "argument" that can be supported by fact but is in many cases largely derived from perspective.
A modern "historical account" that we can use to display this is the story of football player Michael Oher and the book/movie THE BLIND SIDE. Interesting NYT piece yesterday about the different ways that the people who were part of this story describe what happened and look at things (much of the difference derived from the different lens they have on events.) If this is the case with something that happened 15 or so years ago, imagine the distortions perspective can have over centuries.
What do you mean by real story? Like, did he really see the saints in a vision? Or was he paid off with tribute?
More likely the 2nd .. steppe nomadic tribes were extortionists. They firmly believed you can slaughter a sheep only once, but shear it many times.. they preferred shearing.
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