Looking back to my world history courses in high school, I remember we had several sections that talked about Persia.
The first one talked about the first river civilizations: Babylonians, Chinese, Egyptians and Indians, we talked a bit about their religions, so there's no surprise that Zoroastrianism wasn't mentioned.
Second one talked about the Greco-Persian war, and we focused heavily on the misconceptions Greeks had about Persians, and it also focused on Alexander and his successors, no mention of Zoroastrianism (even though Alexander is hated by Zoroastrians for destroying texts).
Third one talked about the Silk Road and how Parthia, the Assyrians, etc. acted as the taxman of the Silk Road keeping the different Rome's from having direct relations with China, still no mention of Zoroastrianism.
Fourth, one talked about the Muslim conquest and how it changed the different countries it yoinked.
We went into relatively big depth on Pre-Islamic Persian history, yet we didn't talk about it, but we talked about Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and hell even Shintoism. Why is Zoroastrianism glossed over like that?
I´m not american and didn't go to an american school I feel my history courses in highschool where really good but I feel let down that I found out about this cool relegion after I graduated and I read a bit about it's history and It's cool af
Broadly speaking, simply because it's not all that relevant to understanding the modern world. Even into the undergraduate university level, a survey education in world history is intended to either provide the groundwork for continuing studies and specialization later on or provide a reference point for cultural motifs and socio-political connections in day to day life. With fewer than 200,000 practitioners worldwide Zoroastrians are just too much of a minority to fit with this goals. I'd hazard a guess that you didn't spend much time on pagan revival movements, Nestorian and Ethiopian Christianity, the Mannaeans, or Jainism despite all relating to areas you covered and existing to influence the modern world.
In a way, its the same reason most curricula teach about Greece and the (early) Greco-Persian Wars, but not the Persian Empire itself. Persia was indisputably more important to the world at the time, but between their own reticence to impose their culture on their subjects, the opposite effect of the Hellenistic powers, and the influence of Hellenism on European colonial history, Greece is more relevant in a modern secondary education.
In the specific sequence of courses you described, setting aside Alexander for a moment, it sounds like you just didn't cover Persia in the period when a detailed understanding of Zoroastrianism was most relevant. Attempts to understand Achaemenid Persian religion are speculative at the best of times, and just as reliant on oblique Greek references as sources from within the empire. Aside from using interpretatio graeca to identify Persian deities with Greek names, it's hard to know what was misconception and what was true. In the Hellenistic Period, Zoroastrianism played very little role in wider events and did not synchronize with Greek traditions to the same degree as Egyptian or Mesopotamian polytheism. Hellenistic Iran and the Parthian Empire are both very poorly documented in surviving sources too. Religion in general was decentralized and only played a minor political role in the Parthian Empire so far as we can tell.
Up to that point, there's even debate about whether or not we can really call it Zoroastrianism. I'm personally of the opinion that we can, but in lieu of a religious Canon or standardized rituals others would argue that we cannot. Religion became a domineering social and political force in Sassanid Persia, but in the context of the Arab Invasion, Islamic Conversion, and even conflict with Rome over persecution of Christians, all you really have to understand is that the two sides disagreed. If you didn't cover the internal history of the Sassanid Empire, then Zoroastrian beliefs never really factored in.
I study ancient Iran and will argue all day that its institutions and legacies deserve more attention. However, if your curriculum doesn't already include the internal histories of those empires, it's hard to see why Zoroastrianism would be an important topic to include.
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 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 experiences 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 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!