It’s up there with the invention of the wheel, the fall of the Roman Republic, the birth of Christ, and the creation of laws. It completely changed almost everything in almost every sense, and very rapidly.
I’m not sure if it’s this way in European schools, but in American ones, the First World War is functionally taught in passing, or almost ignored altogether, despite it being the set of events that almost singlehandedly changed the perception of the USA from a minor power to a major one on the world stage.
I apologize if this question would be better suited to another subreddit, but I really wasn’t sure which one to ask. My girlfriend’s sister is doing a project on it for school, where she is supposed to do her own research on the topic and give a presentation. She asked me to help her with it, knowing that it’s sort of my area of historical expertise, and I was stunned when she told me that has never learned about it and doesn’t even know what countries fought in it, or why, and maybe the Nazis had something to do with it. My own father told me that he was under the impression we simply “fought Hitler the first time.”
Is it the brutality of the combat that makes it a difficulty to teach to children? The potential to germinate thoughts that go against the America-good-guy-world-police narrative like “if the ‘bad guys’ had won,(and they almost did) the world might be a better place because there would be no Nazis and no Holocaust, and no Soviet Union and no Cold War, and therefore my country is not infallible”? Or is the complex geopolitical scenario at that time simply too difficult or boring to teach to kids?
I’d like thoughts from any educators that might be out there if possible as well. This is so disheartening to me. We’re talking about the birth of the modern world, a complete revolution in technology, politics, science, philosophy, medicine, the complete and utter destruction of the old order of things. Our reality hangs on a single bullet fired by the son of a mailman in a tiny European minor most people couldn’t find on a map, and 99.9% of Americans don’t know that these events even happened and if they have some idea, they don’t know why, or to who. Can anyone shed light on this for me?
Hi there! You’ve asked a question along the lines of ‘why didn’t I learn about X’. We’re happy to let this question stand, but there are a variety of reasons why you may find it hard to get a good answer to this question on /r/AskHistorians.
Firstly, school curricula and how they are taught vary strongly between different countries and even even different states. Additionally, how they are taught is often influenced by teachers having to compromise on how much time they can spend on any given topic. More information on your location and level of education might be helpful to answer this question.
Secondly, we have noticed that these questions are often phrased to be about people's individual experience but what they are really about is why a certain event is more prominent in popular narratives of history than others.
Instead of asking "Why haven't I learned about event ...", consider asking "What importance do scholars assign to event ... in the context of such and such history?" The latter question is often closer to what to what people actually want to know and is more likely to get a good answer from an expert. If you intend to ask the 'What importance do scholars assign to event X' question instead, let us know and we'll remove this question.
Thank you!