Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Joanne Jacobs points to this article about the prickly subject of Iraq's new history books.
. . . While US advisers don't want to be seen as heavy-handed in influencing the way Iraqis interpret history, neither do they want to be in the position of endorsing texts that could be anti-American, anti-Israeli, or radically religious.
As a result, some charge, in a matter of months Iraqi education has gone from one-sided to 'no-sided.'
A common problem. My own High School history classes (and I had them up to Advanced Placement level) ended their narrative some time around the WW2 era, and here's what my Japanese wife (not s stupid or uneducated person) knows about 20th Century Japanese Imperial history: zero. We were watching the movie Tora, Tora, Tora one day when she turned to me and asked why Pearl Harbor was such a big deal, they were at war weren't they? Thus began history lesson number 1. And about why it seems some other Asian countries don't care much for the Japanese? "I think Japan might have done something bad in the past..."
Every country has a balance of teaching the real story of the past with what, politically, parents will allow their kids to be taught, and on top of it figuring out what the salient points of history really are.
