Without knowledge of history, and therefore context, it's easy for a population to be controlled.
This is understood. History (and the humanities) are being removed from the curriculum in many western high schools.
At it's most basic:
a/ "Hey Venezuela looks fucked, Socialism must be a fucked system."
b/ "Venezuela is still suffering from the effects of Imperialism, colonialism and foreign intervention in South America. Let's try socialism somewhere without interference"
One of these people learned some historical context.
The zoomers and the generation behind them are learning less than we did about history. That's gonna fuck up the future. A population like that is easily kept reactionary and conservative.
How do we popularize the teaching of the true full history of the 20th century, in and out of schools?
I know that, for me, Radio War Nerd was massively educational.
It’s an interesting question. I’ve always loved history, going back to my youngest days. I used to love fantasy novels like LotR and stuff growing up too, I guess history seemed to me like those stories, except they actually happened once (without elves and magic though lol).
How you spark an interest history in someone that has no interest? I’m not sure. But people enjoy narratives right? History is literally a narrative, the biggest one we have.
For someone who is already a leftist and who wants to become a more complete and educated revolutionary, it should be easy to get them to study history on its own merits - historical materialism is foundational to so much of left wing politics, anyone who is serious about dedicating themselves to left-wing causes should be a student of history. History is a weapon.
In regards your other point about the state of history education, it is fascinating to think that history, and “false” history (of course there’s no such thing available to humans as the true and complete record of what occurred in the past), is possibly the most effective form of propaganda available to any entity or system of control.
Look at our current society, it’s pretty much accepted wisdom that capitalism has been eternal, from the moment civilisation sprang up, this mode of production was with it - it’s part of human nature, etc. etc. Not to mention the consistent omission from popular history of the disgusting imperial crimes committed by countless colonising powers. As I type this it brings to mind the Marxist concept of the base and the superstructure, our default understanding of our “history” in the West is shaped by the capitalist mode of production, which through these historical falsehoods is aided in the quest to perpetuate itself. Interesting to think about.
Part of the problem surely is history just being taught as a series of events which dates you have to remember, rather than bringing a bit of narrative into it, telling stories.
I'm always fascinated when I consciously think of the people living in this moment as humans and not just like abstracts or numbers. That always helped me with relating better to historical events.accepted wisdom that capitalism has been eternal, from the moment civilisation sprang up
I think this is due to capitalism always being equated with trade. One is as you say the mode of production, the other just the exchange of goods. But most people seem to be incapable to make even this distinction.
Agree that the way it's taught is crucial. It's by careful design that vast swathes of the historical of global colonialism are omitted.
We were generally presented with a historical narrative at school, it was just an extremely narrow neoliberal one designed to deter critical thinking.
If you're lucky and you got a teacher that knows how to convey history, like yours apparently did, that surely can be massively important in you developing an interest in the topic and lighting a spark to branch out into stories not told in class, which one otherwise probably won't do if you're taught in a manner that makes you hate everything about the subject.
But even those teachers as you say are bound by what they are told to teach and this always seems to center on the grand victories of the imperial core. Sad world we live in.
No, my history teachers did not convey anything apart from exactly what was in the curriculum. Everything I learned past that was through the help of comrades and my own interest.
So how do we go about popularizing history outside of schools?
Good question I don't really have an answer too, except maybe engaging in local mutual aid groups and trying to educate the people you come into contact with there bit by bit is an idea.
Just listened to the latest "history is a weapon" antifada pod and thought it was a entertaining and enjoyable double act. It would have been extremely educational if you were unaware of any of the history.
Am probably biased but I reckon those two could put that format on stage and tour it, or at least vlog it in an engaging style with an aesthetic as a hook. Something like contrapoints but for 20th century history.
https://hexbear.net/post/343
I definitely feel you, I live in Aus too and I’m trying to make a conscious effort to learn more about history here, working class and indigenous history especially. It doesn’t helped that I moved here at 14 so I missed a lot of what primary and high school teaches about Australian history, so I don’t even have the whitewashed colonial baseline to work from, lol.
I just started listening to the podcast “Frontier War Stories”, it only started up a few months ago. Cool history of colonial Australia, obviously with an indigenous perspective.
How you spark an interest history in someone that has no interest?
By showing them how the establishment is deceiving and stealing from them through false narratives. "Here's what they're not telling you. Why do you think that is?"
I'm thinking of zoomers and younger here who are deliberately kept ignorant of their history. Even the most basic lib shit that I was taught has been removed from schools in the last couple of years. The thought of a population like that coming to maturity in a decade, with no concept of what happened in the world over the the last 150 years, is dark.
Has history education really reached such a poor level? That’s crazy. I live in Australia and I’m not sure how the curriculum is these days, been out of school ten years.
I was speaking to someone at high school level where history has been made an optional subject. Students can ditch it entirely and choose something like broadcast studies (playing with AV equipment) instead.
Seems to me like it's an extremely serious issue at a societal level. Conservatives have realized that education is not a panacea and is detrimental to their world view. There's a reason they hold onto control of curriculums tight as possible.
Graduated from a top-ranking selective high school in NSW, and did history and modern history all the way to the HSC. I wouldn't say it's been completely defanged. For the HSC, we studied the Weimar Republic and it was pretty transparent as to how the Nazis rose to power - enabling by the conservatives and social democrats, Luxembourg getting murdered by the Freikorps in collaboration with the SPD (this was more of a footnote). It didn't do any of that national socialism == socialism stuff though, which was good. I would say that in high-ranking schools, the historical context is taught pretty thoroughly and it's drilled into us that it's the context and conditions that bring about historical events. I can't say how the history curriculum is taught in the majority of schools though.
In terms of socialism being addressed, it was as you would expect, glossed over, mostly because it wasn't our unit of study. There was a unit of study relating to the Russian Revolution and the USSR til dissolution, but from what I've heard, it had a bias towards Trotsky? Not too sure about the rest of the unit though.
