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

[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.

[martinemonster.livejournal.com]

THat is true, but I feel the schools should strive to keep up with current findings. After all, they do that in hard sciences.