When talking with people I find a sad lack of knowledge of History. Not just American History but World History. I doubt many Americans can name more than twenty presidents much less in order. English students learn all the kings, queens, their date of reign, and their wars. We brush through our history by hitting the high points in less than 80 hours of classroom teaching. Most American students never get any World History so they can’t understand the whys of events, religions, animosities or why we are involved.
Americans can’t understand why we are involved in many parts of the world that may not be publicly friendly to America. A lack of historical knowledge is often the reason for our personal and national misunderstandings and mistakes. President Trump says the world is more complicated than he thought. Much of the pseudo-facts on social media and websites depend on the reader being ignorant of history and geo-politics. To understand geo-politics one must know history.
Americans don’t understand national, ethnic, and religious animosities over something that happened hundreds of years ago. Six centuries ago the Ottoman Turks did a death march on hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs and the Serbs have not forgotten. Thus the ethnic Serb hatred embedded in the European Community negotiations with Turkey.
An even longer animosity/hatred is the schism in the Muslim religion. Both the Sunni and Shia sects have the same God as Jews, Protestants and Catholics. Both believe Mohammed was a prophet. The difference is who was the prophet’s successor. The fighting between the two sects started in 632 when Sunnis supported Caliph (ISIS leader is called Caliph.) and the Sunni supported Mohammad’s son-in-law. Iran is 95% Shia and Iraq is 65% Shia. The rest of the Arab world is Sunni and Sunni controlled. That is why the mid-east is such a mess today. No open wars today but proxy wars are almost continuous.
Another example is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the animosity certain groups in the United States have for it. Thanks to NATO, Europe has not had a war since 1945. It was a huge part of why the Soviet Union fell apart. The Eastern European countries, formerly Warsaw Pact and now NATO, are now safe from the invasions from Putin’s Russia. Non-NATO Georgia and Ukraine have lost parts of their nations to Russian invasions. Technically all three countries are geologically European but most people don’t use that distinction.
As long as we provide the leadership, umbrella and bases, war in Europe won’t occur within or without European NATO. Trying to pit member against another, as the President is doing, defeats the purpose of NATO.
A lack of historical knowledge means an administration is ignorant of how and why Iran considers the United States to be their mortal enemy. We caused the overthrow of their leaders and put the Shah in power. We helped him to brutalize his people. Any Iranian discussion with American is difficult because of our meddling. Our purpose was to use Iran as a sheriff over the other Persian Gulf countries with undependable kingdoms. Control of the Persian Gulf was mandatory to continue the flow of oil.
Another problem with the history we are taught in school it’s idealistic. We are taught the high points of our History and make early American’s and events heroic. We aren’t told the real stories of the founding fathers or events so today’s leaders seem to be less than those early heroes.
Two great examples are the Boston Tea Party and Thomas Jefferson’s slave concubine. The Tea Party raid was conducted by a bunch of drunks from a local tavern egged on by smugglers promising more ale, not a bunch of patriotic rebels.
Is it a good idea to make students believe people in the past were exemplary and events were extraordinary? How can kids respect leaders of today if they are compared with fictional characters they studied in school? When they are taught an idealistic fiction with a brief overview, it is no wonder people don’t know the how or why in today’s world.
