Lets compare history lessons.....

Maddogg6

Its been rumored that history books have been changed ('revised')world wide.

It would be intersting to hear others, from other countries, compare what they were taught in school.

For instance - (again, rumor, and I cant be absolutly certain, as I have no means for an A/B comparison)

When I was in school (in the 70's) - I *thought* I was taught that WWII was brought to an end when the US bombed Japan. The 'Enola Gay' for instance was an A/C operated by the USAF that dropped on of the bombs.

I have seen a friend of mine kids school history book that claimed; (parphrasing) 'The United Nations Bombed Japan, thus bringing WWII to an end.' No mention of who/what country carried out the 'deed'. Maybe its simply a typo 'Nations' was supposed to be States'??

Sort of subtle, but definitly a different version, with different implications, than what I remember learning about. But, I dont have an old and new history book to directly compare authors, publishing companies or any other facts.

I conceed that potentially, there could have been differen versions of 'history' from different authors/publishers all along, but still have been consistant through out their 'revisions'.

Kinda scary now that I think about it - we learn from our history not to make the same mistakes, when it *could* be very simple to change those 'lessons' in a new revision of a history book...??

It made me think, anyway..... Who governs such revisions??

Who here DOES have their old school history books? Who wrote/published it.

Has anyone pinpointed any examples of such 'editing' from the same publisher?

Or examples of conficting versions taught in schools from different publishers?

Zelig

Same thing, just less specific. During world war 2, the "United Nations" referred to the allies. The term was actually put into use by the US president at the time.

The UN as we know it now only came into effect in 1945, a few months after the war was ended.

Sandok

Never happened here... Got no clue what you are on about history is history and it doesn't change and I learnt the same stuff whether I studied in Europe or USA.

Judas

games have history rewritten.... there is no mention let alone any sign of a canadian soldier in say call of duty.....

nitrousoxide52

Not exactly rewritten, they just use the popular history.

Maddogg6

Well of course, history (what actually happened) CAN'T change.... but books that tell about it can.Specificlly the books we use in schools to teach the lessons history is *supposed* to teach.

SFOSOK

They probably changed it to be more sensitive to the japanese. I took quite a lot of history at both highschools I went to (maybe 2 years ago) and they were pretty in depth about president Trumans decision and how controversial it was. They also had accounts from the scene of the bombing that said the flash was so bright it burnt people's shadows into the ground. I think they are starting to "edit" history books with small details like that to sort of soften up the whole thing to kids. It seems as the years go on, kids are getting less and less mature for their age. I know this because I looked at my brothers year book (4 yrs older than me) and he and his classlooked like a true adult when he was a senior, when I looked at my yearbook we all looked like kids. I also saw recently the children at my old highschool and they look like they are about 10. Something odd is goin on.

Falstaff

History is usually written by the victors in any war or the dominant power of any country...
I remember years ago when Japanese textbooks referred to the rape of Nanking China as a regretable incidient and gave it three lines in their book, also the slaughter of 6 million Jews was widely dessminated in all forms of text, but Joseph Stalins oppression of considerably more people and their subsequent deaths went un remarked. Amazing isnt it.

SFOSOK

yeah, I know Stalin was bad. In my history books they made very little mention except how he destroyed hitlers Army by destroying eveverything and letting him freeze to death. The tone in fact made Stalin sound somewhat like a hero. I know though he probably killedl ike over half of the people in Russia or they died because his regime was in power.

Falstaff

Hitler was hell on the Polish and even worse on the Jews...
But Stalin...who knows how many people died in his Gulags...
We may never know.

digerati

As a History major I've seen that history gets updated, more exposed, but hardly changed.

And history has some hilarious things, such as the certificate of whiteness.

Pompey

Its been several years since I studied WWII, and the books definitely said it was the united states. At the time we did not learn about Stalin’s purges of the millions that died. That was only because it was not relevant to what we were studying. We covered it later.
Im not sure most people in the west realise how narrow our view of history is.
I cant speak for other countries but in my 5 years with history as a dedicated subject (including this one and im taking NZ history and classics) we have NEVER covered any eastern/American/African/Polynesian cultures. All we have studied are ancient western cultures like Greece and Rome or contemporary western history (things like Black civil rights in USA, Irish famine, Russian revolution). Once we studied India, and that was during the colonial period.
We dont study the great achievements of the Chinese, or the wonders of Angkor Watt. We dont hear about Indias great contributions to mathematics.

The 'gory' bits of history are still in New Zealand Textbooks. When we got our Vietnam textbooks we all turned to the page with the picture of a Buddhist self-immolation protest. There were also pictures of Vietnamese running (clothes burnt off) and 1 of American soldiers handing out cigarettes to local children.
and the time our PM got drunk and called a snap election.