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I wouldnt be surprised if most adults believe the same. Lack of knowledge & interest in countries & cultures outside usa results in this ignorance.
Don't be so quick to think its unique to here.
I have met plenty of people from places like the UK, France, and Spain who deride the US for slavery while ignorant to the fact that they too practiced it in places like Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba. I guess they think black folks are indigenous to those locales.
(THE COLLEGE FIX) — For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.
The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.
“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”
Most high schools only require US history to be taught, having no requirements for history outside the US. I can't remember for sure, as this was quite a while ago, but I don't even think my high school offered history for anything outside of Western Civilization. While a more complete understanding on western civilization would be highly beneficial and certainly dismiss this myth that slavery existed almost exclusively in the US, if one wants to understand slavery, they must look beyond the West.
That said, how history is taught in high school would need to change. Fact memorization is pretty much worthless, and that's more or less how history is taught. A more beneficial way to teach it is to look at how events transpire and how this can explain future events, as well as looking at principles that guided these times. To my high school's credit, I got a pretty good understanding of WWII. The effects of WWI left Germany feeling weak and alienated, so when Hitler shows up with a hyper nationalist message, he's supported. What I didn't get until college was the principles. Germany was late to the unification game, so they had a whole extra century of longing for nationalism when compared to other great European powers. They had it, then lost it after WWI, then Hitler brought it back capitalizing on the ever present anti-Semitism in Germany (and if we're being honest, Europe as a whole; Jews weren't liked for the connections to merchants, who also weren't liked through much of European history) to give the people of Germany an enemy.
Just an example of how history could be taught. Rather than listing a sequence of events, look at individuals and where their views are coming from, why they have them, and why they did what they did. Basically, ask why instead of when.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Google school entrance exams from the 1800s, I doubt half of high school graduates today could pass it.
1. Name 3 events that happened in 1777. Which was most important?
2. Find the cost of 6720 pounds of coal at $6 per ton
3. Write the past tense and past participle of these verbs:
Lay,Seek,Sit,
The level of stupidity to think slavery solely happened in the USA is mind boggling. Just knowing the basics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam would show that slavery has been around at least 3,000 years as all 3 religions give guidelines for slavery. Apparently they don't know there are Black people in Brazil either, maybe they think our slaves escaped and swam there.
Saying that something is our "own variant" implies that is unique to us or that it originated with us. Do I really need to explain that to an adult native speaker of English?
Breeding children into slavery IS different than in some cultures where your term as a slave is finite and/or does not include children born while you are a slave.
U of Wisconsin - Oshkosh is a fairly mediocre school and the professor is likely teaching the lower rung students at that given the better students are likely in technical classes or majors that don't have his class as a requirement.
So, no...this isn't "most" college students but rather the lower part of the barrel of kids in 4-year colleges around the country.
U of Wisconsin - Oshkosh is a fairly mediocre school and the professor is likely teaching the lower rung students at that given the better students are likely in technical classes or majors that don't have his class as a requirement.
So, no...this isn't "most" college students but rather the lower part of the barrel of kids in 4-year colleges around the country.
Lower part? Not really. Their ACT median score is slightly above the national average of college-bound students who take the ACT. I will agree on the mediocre for college-bound students, though. About the same as Southern Illinois University which has one of the major teacher's colleges in the state of Illinois, and earned the supposedly prestigious 2015 Community Engagement classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
I have met plenty of people from places like the UK, France, and Spain who deride the US for slavery while ignorant to the fact that they too practiced it in places like Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba. I guess they think black folks are indigenous to those locales.
Historical idiocy is a global phenomenon.
it was not just practiced. It was far worse. The conditions were so harsh they could not even breed slaves in the Caribbean. Its tragicomic. Because the slaves could not breed , they had to keep importing them. This also kept importing tropical diseases which killed off the Europeans lmost as quickly . I think a new arrival from Europe had a 1 in 4 chance to make it a year. There were also very large revolts, and frequently, unlike in North America which had very few and much smaller revolts. Idiots.....
Of course the Arabs were doing double castration and infanticide.
U of Wisconsin - Oshkosh is a fairly mediocre school and the professor is likely teaching the lower rung students at that given the better students are likely in technical classes or majors that don't have his class as a requirement.
So, no...this isn't "most" college students but rather the lower part of the barrel of kids in 4-year colleges around the country.
When these "lower rung students" visit Jamaica and the Bahamas for Spring Break, where do they think the black people there came from?
Lower part? Not really. Their ACT median score is slightly above the national average of college-bound students who take the ACT. I will agree on the mediocre for college-bound students, though. About the same as Southern Illinois University which has one of the major teacher's colleges in the state of Illinois, and earned the supposedly prestigious 2015 Community Engagement classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
And people wonder why kids learn next to nothing in our schools. Major foundations reward mediocrity in teacher's colleges.
If you re-read my post you'll see that I'm noting that while the school may be average, the kids taking that sort of class (as opposed to say bio-chem or Calc 3) are typically going to be below average for that school.
Being below average at an average school is just that....the lower part of the barrel.
This is common at all Universities. Where I went to school....the "average" student in classes for the business major track were wayyyyy below the average student in the engineering track classes. My degree put me in a blend of classes and the competition difference for my LAS classes vs. my core classes was stark.
When these "lower rung students" visit Jamaica and the Bahamas for Spring Break, where do they think the black people there came from?
That's kinda the crux of the situation, those are generally not the kinds of people that think about stuff like that....just doesn't cross their mind. Certainly not on Spring Break either.
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