American Student's World History Textbook

[Ian_Lee]

I browsed my daughter's Grade 6 Social Science (which is a prelude to World History subject in Grade 7) and I found it weird:

(1) The book gives enormous coverage to ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian civilizations. I can understand the emphasis of Roman and Greek history since they are the embryo of western civilization. But I don't understand why the kids have to remember so many names of the various Pharaohs.

(2) The book also gives certain amount of coverage to the birth of Islam and Mohammad himself.

(3) In comparison, the book just gives scant coverage on religions other than Christianity and Islam, i.e. just a few paragraphs about Buddhism.

(4) Amazingly there are almost nil to zero coverage on the history of ancient India, China and Japan. I flipped through the glossary and only found the word "Wu" related to China. First, I thought the book mentions Sun Wu. But in reality it mentions Zhou "Wu" Wang. However, Confucius, Mencius, Qin Shihuang,......etc were all omitted.

No wonder most Americans are so ignorant about Asia.

[Quest]

My college archaeology course didn't mention a single word on China or Asia. There were finds in Africa, Europe, the Americas, but nope not Asia... In fact the only times Asia was mentioned from middle school thru college were about immigration, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the communists and the Korean War...

[wushijiao]

the Chinese Exclusion Act, the communists and the Korean War...

That sounds fairly typical.

In my time at junior high and high school, we didn't study anything about China, except when Western civilization started to come into contact with China (ie. the Opium Wars and the events after that).

Part of the problem was that my school tried to prepare us for the US History Advanced Placement (AP) exam, and the History of Western Civilizations AP exam. Therefore, Asian history was excluded in an effort to teach to the test. (Although one of my great teachers did a seperate unit on China that he created using his own materials).

By looking at their website, it seems that things have improved. Now there is a World History exam, and there will soon be a Chinese Language and Culture exam.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/subjects.html

Hopefully, this will encourage schools to expand their focus to include more than just American and Western history. After all, it will be increasingly important for people in the US (and in Europe) to have a better understanding of the rest of the world. India, China, Vietnam, Korea...etc are all rising. And some of the problems and conflicts in the Islamic world could probably be avoided if there were more mutual understanding.

[mind_wander]

I have to agreed too this, about the consisent ignorance, because there is less information about China, until now. When, I was studying in high school, there is hardly anything on China, but just a small percentage, besides American History.

[blabber]

When I was in the sixth grade, we had a whole unit test on China

[Lu]

I agree that people should learn more about Asia, especially in a class called World History. But on the other hand, the world is so big, every country has its own history that is interesting and worthwhile to know, and we simply cannot know everything. Therefore I can understand the emphasis on ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, and with recent events in the US in mind I also see that it's wise to know a bit about the Islam. Perhaps there was just no more room for more information.

[kdavid]

What about everyone's universities? What did / does your history / literature department look like?

I was required to take a survey of world lit class, which touched a good bit on eastern literature, for my Lit degree, but was not required to take any Eastern history classes for my History degree. Our "eastern studies department" only had (I think) two professors.

Another question to think about... do you think this will change in the near future? That is, do you think more people will be interested in taking this courses and/or do you think they'll be mandatory? Literature, history, language? Or can we assume that many Americans, or other westerners might think along the lines of, "pfft, too difficult. let them learn to speak English."

Food for thought.

[skitzo]

Americans know VERY little about Islam and the middle east.. I bet Americans know a lot more about China than they do about the Arab renaissance and a million other Arab inventions. Arabs get no credit, Europe stole all their inventions for their "renaissance". The Arab renaissance started 200 years before the European one did.

But what do you expect? This is 'Merica!