What the teachers don´t tell you

[martinemonster]

Do you remember being taught history in school? Now, I only had Norwegian history for 10 years instead of 12, seeing as I transferred to an international school which focused on European, rather than Norwegian modern history, but unless I´m very much mistaken, there was a lot of important stuff left out of my curriculum.

Did you for instance know that the Vikings enjoyed same sex relations?

Or did your teacher or curriculum state anything about the results of Norwegian development aid, or question the views of Norway as a promoter of peace in the world?

Or, most importantly, did you learn that from 1935-1977, more than 44 000 sterilisations were carried out in Norway, and only about half of them were done on condoning patients?

I didn´t learn any of this in high school. The reason I know it now is because I study history at university level. I think it´s time to be more controversial when deciding the curriculum of Norwegian history classes. People should be aware. Or am I wrong? Were you taught this in school? Was I the only one who missed those classes?

And to you people from other countries: Do you ever wonder what might have been left out of your curriculums?

Comments

[nathan-h.livejournal.com]

My understanding on the 'gay viking' issue is that while it was common there was some social stigma in being the 'recieving' man concerned, swince it was sign as a sign of weakness / submission. To be honest, if you put a lot of butch men together for a long period, it tends to happen (c.f. the templars).

As for gaps in our own history, Ireland is hardly mentioned at all in UK history lessons (is william of orange's campaign, cromwell's campaigns, absorbed the country in 1800 and the potato famine all get left out). So to is the Boer war (where Britain invented concentration camps).

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

In the U.S. there's been a growing presence of books like Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong and its sequel, Lies Across America.

As old as history itself

[abigor60.livejournal.com]

What is taught in school in the U.S. is pretty sanitized. The justification for editing history books here in the states is to make historical subjects that are unlikely to anger parents, and are more easily understood by students. It is something often debated on local levels, but not so much on a national one.

Usually people tend not to push for more accurate curriculum, because they believe students that are interested in the subject will likely take courses in history if they attend a university. But some of these texts read like patriotic propaganda.

Hopefully it is not as bad as the Japanese history textbook controversy from a year or two ago. That was a little scary.

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

I don't recall really learning much "scandalous" material in high school (or in my college World History classes, for that matter,) but my American History professor was pretty liberal and we used a textbook called A People's History of the United States, which basically included all the completely douchebaggy things the government has done over the course of the country's history that nobody ever told you about before.

[jhkim.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I never learned about anything like this in high school. I did know about viking homosexuality and the forced sterilizations. (I learned about the sterilizations when I read about Norway in preparation for my first trip there. I learned about homosexuality in the course of research for my Vinland campaign.)

There has been a lot of change in the field of history in the past few decades, exposing bias. However, textbooks are very slow to change, and often opposed by government.

[gurimalla.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what I learned about the vikings (seeing as the vikings were curriculum in like 2. grade or something) but the answer to the other two questions is yes. Of course.
And I didn't even have normal history for the last three years, I had art and music history.
If you didn't learn about point two and/or three in history or social science that means your school/teacher didn't follow the curriculum plans, which is quite common and a big problem when it happens. The curriculum plans are there for a reason...