#also fr op overall comes from a rightful place and its understandable that they'd be completely upset about how unaware ppl are??

[ghost-shepherdess]

the aggressiveness of that last post on political history and war history is not sitting right with me so here goes:

while i do agree with the overall point that things cannot be studied in a vacuum (and this becomes a more relevant topic everyday, considering that the way we perceive history and its related areas is largely influenced by the intense specialization of academic research) i feel it's wrong to assume that this is just about people consciously ignoring the social aspects of cultural and technological evolution ! we must look at the bigger picture here:

the average person's knowledge of history will come solely from what is learned in school, with some added vague information given by historical movies. sadly the western school system isn't built to provide an intersectional deep understanding of history, but rather to ensure that the average citizen will have a base knowledge in a multitude of areas so that he may proceed to the work market and 'be of use' to society.

this makes the teaching of history feel very clinical, distant and almost list-like. we're quickly taught about how humans came to be and how their technology developed so we can speedily reach the greeks and romans, and, from that point on everything is set out to learn about the people in power, usually families of royal bloodlines. we learn all about their genealogical trees, their marriages, their conflicts for territories in distant lands. we only learn about a select number of relevant uprisings, and usually you get centuries worth of social and cultural unrest summarized in a couple of paragraphs. to sum it up: everything becomes about data rather than people! dates, locations and the upper social hierarchy.

this creates a barrier for empathy and self-recognition between the curious student and the thousands of people who walked the land before them. at most it may create a misguided pride over the nebulous deeds of their birth nations.

which brings me to my next point! the social context of the initial post!

most of the userbase in this site is based in the US or in other english speaking countries, which more often than not means that they come from historically colonial power nations.

and it has to be said that the way that history is taught and perceived in a former ostracized or colonized country may be wildly different from the way its taught in the colonizer country. (can we really expect to see colonial history being taught in the same way in brazil and in portugal, for example?)

even though in the past centuries up until this day the voices of marginalized people are still consistently erased!! we have to realize how lucky we are to be in an age where information is easily accessible to a wide audience! but we also need to acknowledge that the information and work that these people put out there is not placed in the front row for others to access and still needs to be searched for; people need to know what to search for!

and this just isn't a tool given to students who study history in the school system, if you're only taught about major wars and political events How are you supposed to know that things like textiles or food are heavily intertwined with those very wars??

I'd much rather some kid on tumblr interested in general textiles with little knowledge of history realizing by chance from a random post that that lovely gown they saw on the museum connects heavily to the sociopolitical context it lived in (and subsequently falling into a nice historical research rabbithole) than to have some kid heavily aware of all of the world's major wars and battles but thinking that's all there is to human history

to wrap it all up since its 3h00 here we need to focus on bringing radical changes to how history is approached within a school setting rather than doing a witch hunt on tumblr kids and teens who were failed by said system

because YES we are witnessing a terrifying period of social unrest and rise of far-right parties that has been shown to bring terrible results repeatedly throughout history!! but the solution is not to rant and publicly drag people but rather to do our best to take direct action and share resources and information so we can fight this as a unified global community