Historical Knowledge

Historians have been known to say, "The problem with Americans is that they don't know history; the problem with Europeans is that they do." By this they mean that Americans repeat mistakes because they forget about the past and its lessons while Europeans too often continue fighting over things which happened long ago.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 some criticized the “ignorance” of Americans in regard to their role in the Middle East. Everything from Woodrow Wilson’s support for the Treaty of Versailles (which divided the Middle East into French and British colonies at the end of World War I), to American policy towards Israel, to the activities of American oil companies was brought up. In Europe, most students do learn about the troubling actions of their nations in the world. Students in England study what happened when Britain ruled Ireland and India. French students learn about Algeria. German students learn about that nation’s actions during World War II. But American history classes rarely speak of some of the things the US did in the past.

"U.S. Army Colonel Jacob Smith tells American reporters that fighting the Filipinos is "worse than fighting Indians". Smith says that he is using tactics against the Filipinos which he had learned fighting "savages" in the American west and Smith, a "veteran" of the Wounded Knee massacre of three hundred and fifty native American men, woman and children, knows all about exterminating the inferior races. The New York Times enthusiastically endorses Smith's embrace of genocide as "long overdue."' - Making The World Safe for Hypocrisy (website) http://mtwsfh.blogspot.com/2008/02/1895-1899-spanish-american-war-sordid.html

To show a couple of examples, American students rarely learn about the nation’s war against Philippine independence at the turn of the 20th Century -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War - or about how the United States came to control Hawaii -http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=189 - but Hungarian students do learn about the Treaty of Trianon -http://www.americanhungarianfederation.org/news_trianon.htm - and Serbian students do learn about the Battle of Kosovo -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kosovo_%281448%29

Does emphasizing certain historic events affect how a nation behaves in the world? Does it impact the citizens of that nation? Do you think Serbians should stop worrying about a battle lost 700 years ago? Should American be more aware of the Philippine-American War? If those changes were made, what might change?

You might want to investigate the incidents above, or they may want to go further and investigate some other “memory,” lost or fully recalled, and consider what is impacted by the memory or the lack of it.

Philippines

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/1230.html

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