How High School-History Failed Us All

It wasn't until I hit my late twenties that I realised I'd never studied history before.

I mean, not really. Sure I'd taken history in high school. I'd even taken some history University thanks to Canada's broad gen-ed requirements for undergraduate degrees. 

But it wasn't until I became interested in history outside of the realm of structured education that I felt like I was really beginning to understand anything at all about the world —and there's a very good reason for that.

If you grew up, like I did, in a prosperous Western nation, there's a good chance that most of the history you learned was about that nation (particularly if you're America. If there's one thing I've learned from my American friends, it's that when it comes to education, America loves learning about America to the exclusion of almost everything else.) Myself, I grew up in Canada. I spent my young life learning about European settlers coming in to colonise a great untamed wilderness — and very little time learning about the indigenous people who already lived in this wilderness and had complex, fascinating societies every bit as interesting if not more than my own —I digress. We learned about fur traders. Coureurs du bois. Filles du roi. Some vague "unpleasantness" about the Metis uprising. And then all the way up through the fascinating world of modern day Canadian politics (spoiler: it's mostly very polite -—except towards indigenous people in which case it's shady as hell.)

Didn't we take "world history", you might be asking? Of course we did — of a kind. We learned about the Ancient Greeks. About the Romans conquering Europe. About the Dark Ages, about the Renaissance. We spent a LOT OF TIME on English history. I can still name every single wife of Henry VIII in order along with method of death (natural, beheaded, childbirth, natural, beheaded and natural, if you're wondering.) Because I elected to take a class called Comparative Civilisations, which was not part of the required curriculum, I learned a little more. I learned about Japan and China and India and Persia… a little. We had a lot to cover and this was, again, not a core part of the curriculum. Just some little extra fun stuff for the particularly nerdy which, you know, guilty.

When I graduated, I was in the top ten percent of students in my province and I thought I knew a thing or two about the world.

Then I got to University and started taking some more in-depth European political history courses and courses on anthropology and sociology and indigenous legal systems and I started to realise that I didn't know so much after all — and it wasn't until much later than that, when I started becoming interested in studying history outside of an institutional setting, that I realised I knew nothing in the grand scheme of things. I also quickly realised that any education I was going to have about the world had to come from me. I had to be the one to seek it out. There were no more guidelines telling me what I should know, and the ones I had been given had left a lot out. So I started reading about history. I started becoming interested in geopolitics and travel and ancient civilisations from around the globe, not just in my own backyard, and about why we're taught the history we're taught. I started looking at what was included in my baseline education and what was left out. And I started to ask why.

What I learned by reading books from all over the world is this: what we are taught in school is barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to becoming an informed global citizen. You will learn how to become a productive citizen of the place in which you live, yes, ideally. But you won't learn to question why things are the way they are or where you really fit in the world as a whole.

For example - why do Western school children learn about the Greeks and Romans as founders of society and philosophical thought and not say, the Persians or the Chinese? Why do we study primarily European history and not the vast kingdoms of Africa or India or Southeast Asia, all of whom were forging ahead with remarkable societies while most of the United Kingdom was still stumbling about in stone huts with no water management systems to speak of? Why is the accepted canon of literature studied in most post-secondary institutions 99.99% old white dudes from Europe to this day? Why do we venerate Judeo-Christian values above all else and not say, the values of Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism? Why don't we at least learn about them all so that we can decide for ourselves what we think?

As you might have guessed already, all of that has to do with power - namely who is in power now and what story they wish to tell about how it came to be that way. We all grew up in a world in which the West reigned supreme. America is the superpower of superpowers (though to a much lesser extent than it was when I was a child) and Western ideals are upheld as the be-all and end-all towards which all nations should strive. The result of this is often that those whose knowledge of history is limited to what they are taught in school are left imbued with an inflated sense of their own country's importance in broader global history, and a diminishment of the accomplishments of other nations. In other words - good old nationalism or its only slightly less problematic cousin, patriotism.

This sense of nationalism, and of the veneration in Western values has a lot to do with the ideas we promote and the ideas we ignore. It's why we study Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as the earliest examples of notable poetic literature and not The Baghavad Gita — which was published 4000 years prior. It's why we all know about the architectural grandeur of Versailles and nothing about the gobsmacking grandeur of Iran's Golestan Palace. It's why we all know at least a little about the Tudors and the Bourbon's but basically nothing about the Mewar Sisodias or Pahlavis. It's why we all know the name Charlemagne, but far fewer know the name Mansa Musa. And it leads to only a partial understanding of our world.

The duty of each global citizen—that is the individual who is able to properly contextualise global events—is to be able to situate what you are told by politicians and by the media at large within the greater global historical context. The good part is that there is a whole world of sources out there for you to learn from and explore. The bad news? You have to find them — and vet them! — for yourself.

But here's the best part — for me at least. The more you learn about the history of the rest of the world, the rest you start viewing yourself not just as a Canadian, or an Australian or a Brit, or an American… and the more you start to view yourself as a global citizen. And this, my friends, affects everything. It means no more only paying attention to what happens in your own small corner of the world, but understanding that everything that occurs in the world affects you in some way, whether you feel it as tsunami-like waves, or barely a ripple. 

Maybe all of this sounds like a lot of responsibility and work to you, but I promise there is fun to be had. You'll learn things that will change your entire world-view and make you insatiably curious about discovering the rest of the world. Maybe things you learn will inspire your next holiday, or even your next move. It might inspire you to read novels and watch films and seek out documentaries from countries other than your own. But most of all, I hope it gives you a profound sense of belonging and the understanding that history is not a "that's mine" and "this is yours" type deal. History has formed us all and it belongs to all of us. And who isn't keen on a good origin story?

I hope you'll join me in this series, which will take a look at some of my favourite topics from throughout history - from the ancient Indus Valley civilisation all the way up to the present day. We'll look at interesting phenomenon and characters from civilisations you might not know of and hopefully, we'll spark your interest in learning about the rest of the world beyond the borders of whatever nation you call home.

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