Curious on non-USian's answers

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Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby godix » Sun May 23, 2010 11:18 pm

What, if anything, were you taught about the US war of independence? 1812 war? US Civil War? I'm just curious how different non-american education viewpoints are on those topics compared to what US education system teaches.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby mirkosp » Sun May 23, 2010 11:36 pm

We didn't get taught most of that stuff... in 5 years we had to start learning history from the very beginnings, so cramming everything together left us with just the time to talk about the important "whole world was involved kinda-sorta" stuff and things that touched us most directly like major european history.
Hedonistic US-only history wasn't really in the plans...

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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Kosmit » Mon May 24, 2010 6:38 am

Pretty much what Mirko said. We mostly concentrated on European and Polish history. There were maybe a couple of lessons about stuff that happened in North America and Kosciuszko's involvement in it, but that was nothing major. Too many things going on with Poland at that time (like the three partitions of Poland and multiple insurrections) to delve deep into american history.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Niotex » Mon May 24, 2010 11:22 am

We obviously started with European history but I also had a basic amount of US history. I'm clearly lacking on the subject though. I'm more acquainted with stuff that happened in Asia mainly because of our European influences there in the VOC days. However from what I do remember and what I've learned over time on my own.. You guys were hypocrites <<
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby mirkosp » Mon May 24, 2010 1:29 pm

Well, to add something though, I did get taught about the war of independence and the civil war... 1812 was overlooked though, IIRC.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Jnzk » Mon May 24, 2010 3:17 pm

I had to check what happened in 1812 from Wikipedia. :roll: The independence and civil wars were given a few pages in history textbooks, if I remember right.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Otohiko » Mon May 24, 2010 3:32 pm

In Canada, obviously the US is kind of an interest area, even if not a primary one. Although I really had to wait till university to get into the details of US history other than US-history-as-relates-to-Canada.

In Russia, history in school is generally pretty Euro-centric. The US revolution is considered only in passing and, in some ways, only insofar as it is relevant to the French revolution (which is the big story of that period there). It's still seen as an antecedent to follow-on revolutionary action in Europe as well as the beginning of what would slowly become de-colonization. The revolutionary legacy to today's American political and legal system is something that is (unfortunately) not really mentioned. 1812 is likewise of very passing interest - the "War of 1812" in Russia means something entirely different, i.e. Napoleon's invasion of Russia (which arguably was far more significant and decisive anyway, and I'm rather irritated at North American history education largely ignoring it).

The Civil War is probably the biggest pre-WWII US story, although usually studied in broad sketches rather than detail. It's generally taught in a very pro-yankee, anti-slavery, good-guys-vs-bad-guys, national-unity-triumphs sort of fashion, but otherwise it's definitely seen as a major event on the world stage there.

Contrary to what one might think, at least up until the end of WWII, Russian historiography looks at the US in a fairly positive light and doesn't understate it too much, just doesn't really take a special interest in it. By and large, most focus is on European history and the US is very much on the margins of that until WWI if not WWII.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby godix » Mon May 24, 2010 11:06 pm

Alrighty. Kinda what I figured. The reason I ask, I ran into some random site that mentioned various different perspectives on history. I wasn't surprised because you'd expect a nation to focus on it's own history and then history of the region it's in. But the website wasn't talking about that, it was going into how different nations have totally different viewpoints on the same events. Obviously an English person would have a really different view of the US Revolutionary War than an American would, but according to this site the differences were more than just that. This site claimed some countries view the War of 1812 as basically a continuation of the Revolutionary War rather than separate wars as Americans are taught. Other nations are said to view the War of 1812 as a part, although a really trivial side part, of the Napoleonic wars while Americans are taught we stayed out of the Napoleonic wars entirely.

Perhaps a better example would be a study I head about where a teacher asked his students to write down the first country they think of when they hear 'WWII'. Almost without exception, westerners wrote Germany while asians wrote Japan, even if the asians had been born and raised in a western nation.

Anyway, I was just curious on what sort of response I'd get with this question. I should have guessed 'barely heard of it' would be most common outside America.

Otohiko wrote:1812 is likewise of very passing interest - the "War of 1812" in Russia means something entirely different, i.e. Napoleon's invasion of Russia (which arguably was far more significant and decisive anyway, and I'm rather irritated at North American history education largely ignoring it).

Actually, American education doesn't entirely ignore that. Napoleon is considered a big deal in US education. His invasion of Russia is usually covered, with the focus being on how huge of a defeat it was and how much the Russians suffered during it. I won't say most Americans know about Napoleon invading, because most people barely pass history, but it is covered a lot more than you would expect a nation that wasn't involved in the war to cover it.

Now WWII, you'd have a point there. US history classes barely mention that Russia was invaded, much less how influential that front was in the war.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby mirkosp » Tue May 25, 2010 1:56 am

godix wrote:US history classes barely mention that Russia was invaded, much less how influential that front was in the war.

And the Russian front was the first one to get to Berlin, too... :(
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby BasharOfTheAges » Tue May 25, 2010 4:57 pm

Maybe it's just me, but by the time we actually got to covering WWII in history classes in school in any detail, I was in an honors class in high school so we covered quite a bit of it in great detail from all the theaters. My 8th grade dose of US history was extremely broad... It Also happened when i was out for a week because of my grandmother's death... fucked if I remember anything we covered. The text book was so old it ended with a current events section that marked the start of the cold war.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Kosmit » Wed May 26, 2010 9:00 am

godix wrote:Now WWII, you'd have a point there. US history classes barely mention that Russia was invaded, much less how influential that front was in the war.

What bothers me more is that Hitler is made out to be the biggest bad guy of WWII, while what he did is nothing compared to how many people died under Stalin's command.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Pwolf » Wed May 26, 2010 6:48 pm

I honestly don't think my history classes went over the War of 1812 at all. If they did then it was along the lines of "Oh yea, we were invaded in 1812... Now lets move on to Westward Expansion..." I remember a lot of euro stuff but not a whole lot until WWI was covered. even then, WWI wasn't really covered in great detail either. My classes spent a lot of time covering the great depression and what led up to it rather then the war itself. WWII was another story, we had that beaten down our brains like there was no tomorrow.

Kosmit wrote:
godix wrote:Now WWII, you'd have a point there. US history classes barely mention that Russia was invaded, much less how influential that front was in the war.

What bothers me more is that Hitler is made out to be the biggest bad guy of WWII, while what he did is nothing compared to how many people died under Stalin's command.


iirc and excuse my ignorance if I'm completely off, while the majority of the casualties during the war were under Stalin's rule, Russia was getting their ass handed to them by Germany. At the time they needed people to fight back and stand their ground. I don't really believe that killing their own soldiers while they retreated was the best way to go about it but if that was going to get people to hold Germany back, then desperate times call for desperate measures. Russia also had way more soldiers then they had guns to give them so a lot of them went into battle with nothing but a knife and maybe a few rounds of ammo for a gun they didn't have. Of course there's more to it then just that but the point being looking at just the amount of casualties doesn't really make Stalin that bad compared to Hitler who tried to wipe out an entire group of people for no reason.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby mirkosp » Wed May 26, 2010 7:30 pm

Pwolf wrote:
Kosmit wrote:
godix wrote:Now WWII, you'd have a point there. US history classes barely mention that Russia was invaded, much less how influential that front was in the war.

What bothers me more is that Hitler is made out to be the biggest bad guy of WWII, while what he did is nothing compared to how many people died under Stalin's command.


iirc and excuse my ignorance if I'm completely off, while the majority of the casualties during the war were under Stalin's rule, Russia was getting their ass handed to them by Germany. At the time they needed people to fight back and stand their ground. I don't really believe that killing their own soldiers while they retreated was the best way to go about it but if that was going to get people to hold Germany back, then desperate times call for desperate measures. Russia also had way more soldiers then they had guns to give them so a lot of them went into battle with nothing but a knife and maybe a few rounds of ammo for a gun they didn't have. Of course there's more to it then just that but the point being looking at just the amount of casualties doesn't really make Stalin that bad compared to Hitler who tried to wipe out an entire group of people for no reason.


I think he was referring to Gulags...
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Pwolf » Wed May 26, 2010 7:53 pm

mirkosp wrote:I think he was referring to Gulags...


Ahh, yes how could I forget -_- I was looking at military casualties as Stalin "being a bad guy" rather then civilians. But again, iirc, Stalin didn't target a specific group of people and the total number of casualties from the Gulags (which also consisted of actual criminals and not just POWs and innocent civilians) during the war wasn't even close to the number of innocent civilians killed by Hitler's holocaust. Not to say Stalin wasn't a bad guy overall, he has somewhere around 40 million deaths associated to his name during his time as ruler but as far as being the big bad guy of WWII? I think Hitler still takes the cake.
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Re: Curious on non-USian's answers

Postby Garylisk » Wed May 26, 2010 11:18 pm

I was in honors history in senior year of high school, and we covered WWII in great detail, including Russia, but I think the basic history classes do sort of glaze over it.
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