• Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      A lot of people are, maybe even most. They usually aren't as arrogantly confident about it.

      Source: I work in higher ed. I met someone with Masters Degrees who thought Alexander the Great and the Prophet Muhammad were contemporaries. I could give other similar examples.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        i am going to pretend the master's was like some STEM b.s., because my MS is in STEM and the ignorance of the arts and broad strokes history is characteristic.

        but my fear is that person was an MA in like the classics and i can't reconcile that with it only being tuesday.

        • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          MS in Education, they were an art teacher. We were talking about art history, which is how Muhammad and Alexander came up.

          Teaching elementary school art, a teacher probably doesn't need to have the best grasp of history. But it was still pretty shocking since these are two of the biggest figures in the western history. It's not like some western educated person not knowing that Cao Cao predates Kublai Khan or whatever.

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing those kinds of things, as long as you're not justifying horrible actions or speaking from a position of authority justified in your ignorance.

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That's the average person. A lot of people wouldn't need to know this because they don't come from an abrahamic background, and lots of the places with it don't teach history well.