I'll have to double-check the definition of culture-hero, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with mythic status than reality. Christopher Columbus, culture hero, intrepid explorer and blah blah blah... one of dozens in the search for a profitable (read: no Muslims no taxes) route to Asia, blindly convinced the world was half its centuries-calculated size, completely lucked out that the Americas were where he thought Japan was, died still refusing to believe that he hadn't reached Asia.
Considering the way we teach history in schools, unless they've changed drastically in the years since I've graduated -- which doesn't seem likely, given how much has been crushed under standardized testing, STEM-is-best, and budget-cut the arts -- I'm not surprised people 1. have the impression that history begins and ends with white America circa 1500, and 2. can't remember much more than two Presidents and Ben Franklin. I remember sitting in 11th grade history thinking that if I heard the line about Ben Franklin's @#$% chair one more time, I was going to scream.
I mean GEEZ. My dad is still consistently surprised when he mentions anything Roman and I don't have a clue, because by the time I took history all we got of Rome was "they had pretty much the same gods as the Greeks, here are the lists of names and a couple expurgiated myths" and "Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar". My mom didn't know Timbuktu was a real place. Approximately half of all recorded history is Chinese, in terms of deciphered and undestroyed written information, but American students get none of it. My 7th-grade history book had a unit on the Indus Valley, but the actual class did not. No one mentions the African kingdoms, India, Arabia, Oceania, or Asia as anything other than a spice route target and Pearl Harbor... rrgh!
Now I'm not saying that American kids need to know, much less memorize, 10,000+ years and six continents' worth of events. There wouldn't be enough time even without other courses. However, reaching adulthood with the impression that people other than white Abrahamic men did more than sit in huts waiting for European colonization to come enlighten them? IS something that needs to happen.
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Date: 2013-07-23 07:18 pm (UTC)Considering the way we teach history in schools, unless they've changed drastically in the years since I've graduated -- which doesn't seem likely, given how much has been crushed under standardized testing, STEM-is-best, and budget-cut the arts -- I'm not surprised people 1. have the impression that history begins and ends with white America circa 1500, and 2. can't remember much more than two Presidents and Ben Franklin. I remember sitting in 11th grade history thinking that if I heard the line about Ben Franklin's @#$% chair one more time, I was going to scream.
I mean GEEZ. My dad is still consistently surprised when he mentions anything Roman and I don't have a clue, because by the time I took history all we got of Rome was "they had pretty much the same gods as the Greeks, here are the lists of names and a couple expurgiated myths" and "Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar". My mom didn't know Timbuktu was a real place. Approximately half of all recorded history is Chinese, in terms of deciphered and undestroyed written information, but American students get none of it. My 7th-grade history book had a unit on the Indus Valley, but the actual class did not. No one mentions the African kingdoms, India, Arabia, Oceania, or Asia as anything other than a spice route target and Pearl Harbor... rrgh!
Now I'm not saying that American kids need to know, much less memorize, 10,000+ years and six continents' worth of events. There wouldn't be enough time even without other courses. However, reaching adulthood with the impression that people other than white Abrahamic men did more than sit in huts waiting for European colonization to come enlighten them? IS something that needs to happen.
Er, /rant. ^^()