I was in class a week or so ago and realized that we spend all of 1 chapter on world war 1 but had 7 chapters on the time from the civil war till world war 1 then 4 chapters from WW1 til WW2 and only 2 chapters on WW2. I go up and ask my techer why this is and I am told. "the actual battles and wars are unimportant as far as history is concerned, jest why the war started and what happend after." I was realy confused and some what irritated at this response. So I decide to as another teacher for a less "P.C." answer. and the only answer i got was a disgusted "the books all have to be polliticy correct and as far as the state is concerned the wars themselfs arent important. My question is how are the deaths of millions of people not important in the eyes of history??
Politicly correct text books.
- Thread starter TheMontashu
- Start date
Is this an American history class by any chance?
AP US history, there was also only 1 chapter on the revolutionary war and 1 on the civil war. So if you were going to say that thoes wars were in europe they did it with all the wars.
As someone studying history, I find that details such as battles tell you very little about history, even if they are interesting. What I find more important are the causes and outcomes of war. Every now and then a battle will change the course of the war in a very specific way, and that is something that historians will pick up on. In general, history is more about the reasons for action, instead of the action itself. History will repeat itself, but the details won't.TheMontashu said:
^What he said.
Wars are quite redudant and when studying a broad spectrum like that of all of American History, you can get quite bogged down. Hence, they like to keep the war details to a minimum because of their relative unimportance to history as a whole. Don't get me wrong, wars are very important to history, just not the details of them...like you said, all that matters is who started it, general gist of how many people died/how much money was spent, and what happened after. History isn't a Steven Segal movie, sorry
You'll have plenty of chances to study individual wars in college.
Wars are quite redudant and when studying a broad spectrum like that of all of American History, you can get quite bogged down. Hence, they like to keep the war details to a minimum because of their relative unimportance to history as a whole. Don't get me wrong, wars are very important to history, just not the details of them...like you said, all that matters is who started it, general gist of how many people died/how much money was spent, and what happened after. History isn't a Steven Segal movie, sorry
You'll have plenty of chances to study individual wars in college.
I more or less agree with everyone else, Individual battles are only meaningful if you are studying warfare, not history. The politics and policies that lead to the war are important, as are the results.
No one thinks millions of people dying in battle is unimportant, it's just not the focus of most history classes. What's more important is to realize why the wars were fought. In the case of WWII it's a combination of things, including Japan being frozen out of access to resources it needed to grow, Germany rebelling against the armistice agreement, and a generally growing level of nationalism around the world. The world was recovering from a depression and everyone was feeling the pain.
It's a lot more complex than I've represented, but more relevant still than knowing Lcdr Waldron a half-Cherokee Indian TDB squadron commander, pulled off an amazing feat of navigation, found the Japanese fleet at the battle of midway, only to have his entire squadron wiped out by the Japanese combat air patrol. Or that Cmdr. Howard W. Gilmore commanded the USS Growler on her fourth patrol when, mortally wounded by machine gun fire after GROWLER had rammed a patrol vessel, he ordered the ship submerged while he lay wounded on the bridge. The Commanding Officer, the assistant officer of the deck and a lookout were lost and Cmdr. Gilmore was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. These stories, while interesting, aren't as important to general history as the 'Why' of WWII.
No one thinks millions of people dying in battle is unimportant, it's just not the focus of most history classes. What's more important is to realize why the wars were fought. In the case of WWII it's a combination of things, including Japan being frozen out of access to resources it needed to grow, Germany rebelling against the armistice agreement, and a generally growing level of nationalism around the world. The world was recovering from a depression and everyone was feeling the pain.
It's a lot more complex than I've represented, but more relevant still than knowing Lcdr Waldron a half-Cherokee Indian TDB squadron commander, pulled off an amazing feat of navigation, found the Japanese fleet at the battle of midway, only to have his entire squadron wiped out by the Japanese combat air patrol. Or that Cmdr. Howard W. Gilmore commanded the USS Growler on her fourth patrol when, mortally wounded by machine gun fire after GROWLER had rammed a patrol vessel, he ordered the ship submerged while he lay wounded on the bridge. The Commanding Officer, the assistant officer of the deck and a lookout were lost and Cmdr. Gilmore was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. These stories, while interesting, aren't as important to general history as the 'Why' of WWII.
ohio said:
Although I'm pretty sure the second teacher you described DOES suck.
I've heard it referred to as the "Hitler" channel for that very same reason.sanjuro said:
I had a communications class before where the text book said "Gender" was only a learned "Trait" based on environment. I copied the pages and gave them to my sociology prof.
The war still wages on the campus of East TN State U. til this very day.
The war still wages on the campus of East TN State U. til this very day.
It's true. I don't know if you've noticed but in all their 'documentarys' there is always evil, threatening music for the supposed 'baddy'. I hate that ****. China vs. Japan, China gets the evil music because America is friends more with Japan. Lame.Old Man G Funk said:
I bet some poeple on here think im a lesbian.Changleen said:Well done 'Shirley'...
Headline: Guy called Shirley sparks debate on Gender'
But lesbians are human.BurlyShirley said:
Some fields of study use the term "Gender" specifically for learned traits and "Sex" for biological traits. A matter of semantics really. Another way to get stuck in the quagmire of Nature/Nurture.BurlyShirley said:
They will remain human for the timebeing. However, I forsee the President issuing a "signing statement" that will allow the administration to interpret homosapiens as it sees fit, or to better push its evangelical agenda forward. Praise Geebus!fluff said:
Hmm, how many pounds of dead bodies equal one point for freedom?Changleen said:
Don't forget that academic theorists of a certain (say, oldschool feminist-marxist, perhaps?) absolutely refuse to believe that sex, in this context, has ANY interface with gender traits. Just because they say so.BuddhaRoadkill said:
We're all physical and social blank slates until Mommy and especially Daddy start teaching us that boys want to screw girls and that boys like cars and girls like dolls...and even that boys are better at sports than girls.
And they're right, because they're academics with an agenda. Science is just another tool of male historico-political oppression, see?
You will be assimilated. Shirley especially.
MD
Well, it works in movies doesn't it? I mean, c'mon, the audience has to know when to boo and hiss somehow.Changleen said:
Hell, that's why I never wear black - I'm one of the good guys.Old Man G Funk said:
(Actually I do wear black, but only if it's clean & pressed and the bad guys are wearing something drab.)
I also fake an American accent in place of my bad-guy English one.
Actually, you just can't wear a black hat. Bad guys always wear black hats.fluff said: