Why does history suck so much?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I'm not talking about history overall. I quite like history very much. I'm talking about the way history is presented in schools.</p>

<p>Like how you are told some B.S about thanksgiving being about the Pilgrims and the Indians gathering for peace or how Napoleon was a short man when in fact his stature was considered normal for his time and some other B.S like how all the founding fathers were god-like saints</p>

<p>Why must we be fed B.S and then have to DETOX ourselves after the main course?</p>

2

<p>You know the saying “History is written by the winners”. If the Native Americans were the winners, they would’ve written history as they saw it, and it would’ve been different. History is sometimes biased, you have to look on your own to find both sides of a story.</p>

3

<p>Heroification. 'Nuf said.</p>

4

<p>It sounds like you’re describing elementary school in elementary school, or a class with a very, very, VERY bad teacher.</p>

5

<p>It all depends on the teacher. Alot of my history teachers don’t follow the cirriculum given at the beginning of the year so I end up learning things not in a textbook</p>

6

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<p>All of it is.</p>

7

<p>That’s what she said</p>

8

<p>That made no sense.</p>

9

<p>History is going to be skewed to make the winning side look better.</p>

10

<p>Higher quality history courses tend to have less of this. Those are typically taken in high school (especially by the upper-tier students) and college.</p>

11

<p>I don’t understand why you’re all saying it’s skewed. My AP US History teacher didn’t skew anything. When we got to the Revolutionary War, he didn’t pull that “We left for freedom; we rule” crap. He said that the colonists were a bunch of ungrateful whiners and the British personally saw no benefit in continuing a war with us, but if they had they would have won eventually…</p>

<p>I mean, he did throw a conservative skew when talking about Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton, but that was about it…</p>

12

<p>Yeah, if my AP US History class was meant to indoctrinate me… then they might want to rework the curriculum.</p>

13

<p>My Teacher told us that we won the revolutionary war because of Guerrilla warfare.</p>

<p>She didn’t say “god” but I knew she wanted to.</p>

<p>But she did tell us how useless John F. Kennedy was and how he is romanticized and how the only thing he did was die.</p>

14

<p>^^ That actually is very true. If it wasn’t for his youth, wildly controversial death, and articulateness, I’d be willing to bet he’d be ranked near the bottom of presidents. But unfortunately most Americans vote based on image rather than on character or issues. Only thing JFK got right in my opinion was the missile crisis.</p>

<p>But then, that’s just my opinion.</p>

15

<p>^ He could also read 4-5 newspapers entirely in one morning.</p>

16

<p>Moe Berg topped that, he read about 10 a day.</p>

17

<p>^Hot dog!</p>

<p>I can barely get past the front page haha. But that’s because I find the news rather boring…But lately I have developed an interest in politics.</p>

18

<p>Same here. I usually just browse over whatever looks interesting on a couple of news sites online. </p>

<p>But Moe Berg had to read 10, he worked for the CIA :)</p>

19

<p>Oh, no wonder haha.</p>

20

<p>In Berkeley, you sort of begin to long for an idealized version of history.</p>