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Don't Know Much About History
Sep. 1st, 2006 04:12 pm♠
BEIJING, Aug. 31 — When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.
-- Joseph Kahn for The NY Times
It is argued that history is not being rewritten, which is common in communist and dictatorial countries, but is being diminished. I guess. It is noted that this is a trend in historical teaching that the West has been following for more than half a century. Perhaps. It would help to explain how we have become dumber about history, in addition to becoming dumber about much else. China is possibly only advancing this trend.
It is positively noted:
The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.
That is certainly better than the distortive communist inculcation that I suppose dominated classrooms before. The problem, though, is that this still is not history. And history is good to know.
I'm not merely thinking in terms of intellectual aesthetics. Without having an historical grounding of today's social and political circumstances, a people perhaps becomes more malleable to the whims and sloganeering of today's leadership.
Maybe one does not have to rewrite history to better subjugate a population; maybe it is enough to keep them content-free.
And seriously, teaching Chinese history without Mao is like teaching biology without evolution... oh, wait.
xXx
BEIJING, Aug. 31 — When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.
-- Joseph Kahn for The NY Times
It is argued that history is not being rewritten, which is common in communist and dictatorial countries, but is being diminished. I guess. It is noted that this is a trend in historical teaching that the West has been following for more than half a century. Perhaps. It would help to explain how we have become dumber about history, in addition to becoming dumber about much else. China is possibly only advancing this trend.
It is positively noted:
The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.
That is certainly better than the distortive communist inculcation that I suppose dominated classrooms before. The problem, though, is that this still is not history. And history is good to know.
I'm not merely thinking in terms of intellectual aesthetics. Without having an historical grounding of today's social and political circumstances, a people perhaps becomes more malleable to the whims and sloganeering of today's leadership.
Maybe one does not have to rewrite history to better subjugate a population; maybe it is enough to keep them content-free.
And seriously, teaching Chinese history without Mao is like teaching biology without evolution... oh, wait.
