Post by kims on Jun 28, 2024 22:38:15 GMT
These MGM fillers for the cinema program were popular in the era before Americans of most incomes could afford overseas travel. I just saw the one on Algiers and Morocco. I was struck by one sentence. He was telling the composition of Casablanca: Arabs, Spanish, Negros, Italian, a few British and German. I was struck that Arabs and "Negros" seemingly have no nationality. He didn't have a prejudiced view, he was stating facts as he understood them.
This reminded me, way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (okay, I'm not that old) but many years ago in high school world history only U.S. and Europe existed as civilized countries and every else existed to be conquered. Also odd was that Canada had no mention after the Revolutionary War. In college I learned to be curious about the rest of the world after meeting international students. I don't know that textbooks were written to intentionally marginalize. After seeing FitzPatrick's travelogue, I think there wasn't much knowledge because we were quite isolated and self-sufficient. If World History is still taught in high school, I hope it is world history.
I'm glad I became interested in the history of other countries and cultures. One eye-opener is Jack Weatherford's books on the Mongols. They used a monetary system for travelers like the Knights Templar and were more tolerant of all religions than any other groups in all of history. History became very interesting when I didn't have to memorize dates, who "discovered" what country and who conquered who.
This reminded me, way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (okay, I'm not that old) but many years ago in high school world history only U.S. and Europe existed as civilized countries and every else existed to be conquered. Also odd was that Canada had no mention after the Revolutionary War. In college I learned to be curious about the rest of the world after meeting international students. I don't know that textbooks were written to intentionally marginalize. After seeing FitzPatrick's travelogue, I think there wasn't much knowledge because we were quite isolated and self-sufficient. If World History is still taught in high school, I hope it is world history.
I'm glad I became interested in the history of other countries and cultures. One eye-opener is Jack Weatherford's books on the Mongols. They used a monetary system for travelers like the Knights Templar and were more tolerant of all religions than any other groups in all of history. History became very interesting when I didn't have to memorize dates, who "discovered" what country and who conquered who.