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I have reviewed most of the history my kids learned as they were growing up. Most of it is actually decent. Often, uncomfortable truths are avoided where conte

I have reviewed most of the history my kids learned as they were growing up. Most of it is actually decent. Often, uncomfortable truths are avoided where contemporary standards differ wildly from a historical context. This is unfortunate because students do not understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced wrt race relations (e.g. what passed as normal race relations in 1860 throughout the entire US would be considered outrageously racist now...or the idea that in 1943 Americans sympathized with imprisoned Japanese citizens, the normalcy of anti-Semitism throughout most of history etc). Instead children are taught to view the past through the standards and tastes of the present, and history becomes a matter of making moral judgements and shaping present morality (a valuable function but not the point of history). But indeed even our study of history will one day make great history...what happens when history is written by people who have never had to kill to survive?

brobdingnagians 8y ago
Which is a real shame since one of the points of learning history is to understand why things happened and how very different things can be from our own times and cultures. It is good to go through the uncomfortable bits, since those are the most difficult to understand, and the most rewarding. I sometimes think that the difference between one culture through time is larger than the difference in culture between two different countries now. It is good to understand the most different things, either to avoid them and their root cause, or to adopt the things people in history have done better than us. History repeats itself :D
danharaj 8y ago
> This is unfortunate because students do not understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced wrt race relations (e.g. what passed as normal race relations in 1860 throughout the entire US would be considered outrageously racist now... There were people back then who thought it was an outrage too. Maybe you should be more uncomfortable with the past.
- claydavisss 8y ago
  It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone? The problem of moralizing is that our present "high horses" are wobbly.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    I don't know that we need to interpret the GP's post as moralizing. You can also interpret it as a simple statement of fact: History is usually written by those who were in power at the time, and that means that it doesn't typically include the opinions of those who weren't. The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. It doesn't even pass the smell test unless you either don't have a good sense of just how many people were enslaved at that time and place, or you don't think slaves count as people. That isn't to say that the morals of the people dictating how society worked weren't different at the time, just that getting the phrasing right does matter.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      > The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. Even that is a somewhat controversial statement - as the author mentioned, historians (or anyone who is interested in and studies history) are apt to bring in nuance. From my understanding from reading the correspondence and journals of people in that era, people in the antebellum South weren't "OK" with the institution of slavery to the same degree. Some thought it was wrong but the most practical option, some thought it was abhorrent, some had their opinions colored by their own fortunes being tied closely to it. Some where abject racists even by the standards of the time. It was a controversial and nuanced issue at the time... like every other political issue in the public arena.
  - jerf 8y ago
    "It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone?" You negate your own point when the second clause clearly implies that you're still applying the fashionable standards of today. To demonstrate how the future may be different, you need to apply different standards. The future may well consider today's environmental degradation as simply a necessary step to the glorious future they live in, and be amused at the parochialness of the people of the time who were worried about it. They could use the metaphor of an egg; shortly before the chick hatches, the egg environment is getting pretty nasty, full of waste products that have nowhere to go. The chick can project that death is certainly around the corner if they don't stop growing soon. But it can't stop growing; it must hatch. (Before you go "But jerf...!" and start trying to tear that metaphor apart, bear in mind I'm writing from the perspective of an already-glorious future here, not claiming it is absolutely something true of the present.) Another heterodox idea I've considered is that the future may well mock us for our concern over the environment when the real threat was technological tyranny the whole time, except the tyranny probably wouldn't let alone learn that much about the present time.... But the general idea holds; there are plenty of future threats that may turn out in the end to be far more dangerous than the environment and for it to have been a near waste of time in the end to put so much effort into the environment instead of dealing with $THREAT. To get here, I'm also projecting into the future the subconscious idea that most of us carry that there is something inevitable about the way the future went and that somehow people should have known. A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. So in the future, if some other disaster overtakes humanity, I fully expect the future to project back on to us a belief that we should in the here-and-now already know about this threat and have been dealing with what seems to them to be patently obviously a bigger deal than the environment. In the real here-and-now, where the future is not known, taking good care of the environment is a rational move. But in the future they may really be cursing us for not throwing billions of dollars at friendly AI. Or whoknows what.
ewams 8y ago
I've had this same conversation but concerning ages when normal things happen. Look at when people got married and had children in 1860 vs 1960 vs 2018. In this short amount of time people went from having children being normal from 12-14 to 18-30, to 25-40. Yes people still have children at young ages but it is more of a norm to do it later. Just look at all the HN articles talking about that the last couple years. Then listen to conversations when you hear about a 22 year old marrying a 16 year old, things get said like "pedophile" and "gross" and "thats just wrong." Even though not too long ago that was normal. And that feedback is just from the States. Other countries and regions are different. Maybe here 18 is a magical age where you become an adult but in the far East its 16. In Amazonia it is 13. (I just made those numbers up, I do not know). Makes you wonder, what is normal or moral to me that is just learned behavior and not really normal or moral?
- pjc50 8y ago
  These things aren't just arbitary changes, they're part of the consent revolution and the general post-Enlightentment search to have reasons why we do things rather than just the arbitary tyranny of ""normal"". > 13 This stuff depends on place as well as time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-Balls-Scandal-How-Jerry-Lee-Lewis-marriage-13-year-old-wrecked-career.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-B...
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  This is actually inaccurate. You are portraying it as a monotonic trend towards older marriages, but it was actually a local minimum in the 50s and 60s. The average age of marriage in 1890 was roughly the same as 1990 for men and 1980 for women[1]. After that typical marriage ages dropped gradually until the 50s and 60s and then started rising again. [1] https://www.infoplease.com/us/marital-status/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010 https://www.infoplease.com/us/marital-status/median-age-firs...

brobdingnagians 8y ago

Which is a real shame since one of the points of learning history is to understand why things happened and how very different things can be from our own times and cultures. It is good to go through the uncomfortable bits, since those are the most difficult to understand, and the most rewarding. I sometimes think that the difference between one culture through time is larger than the difference in culture between two different countries now. It is good to understand the most different things, either to avoid them and their root cause, or to adopt the things people in history have done better than us. History repeats itself :D

danharaj 8y ago

> This is unfortunate because students do not understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced wrt race relations (e.g. what passed as normal race relations in 1860 throughout the entire US would be considered outrageously racist now... There were people back then who thought it was an outrage too. Maybe you should be more uncomfortable with the past.

claydavisss 8y ago
It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone? The problem of moralizing is that our present "high horses" are wobbly.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  I don't know that we need to interpret the GP's post as moralizing. You can also interpret it as a simple statement of fact: History is usually written by those who were in power at the time, and that means that it doesn't typically include the opinions of those who weren't. The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. It doesn't even pass the smell test unless you either don't have a good sense of just how many people were enslaved at that time and place, or you don't think slaves count as people. That isn't to say that the morals of the people dictating how society worked weren't different at the time, just that getting the phrasing right does matter.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    > The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. Even that is a somewhat controversial statement - as the author mentioned, historians (or anyone who is interested in and studies history) are apt to bring in nuance. From my understanding from reading the correspondence and journals of people in that era, people in the antebellum South weren't "OK" with the institution of slavery to the same degree. Some thought it was wrong but the most practical option, some thought it was abhorrent, some had their opinions colored by their own fortunes being tied closely to it. Some where abject racists even by the standards of the time. It was a controversial and nuanced issue at the time... like every other political issue in the public arena.
- jerf 8y ago
  "It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone?" You negate your own point when the second clause clearly implies that you're still applying the fashionable standards of today. To demonstrate how the future may be different, you need to apply different standards. The future may well consider today's environmental degradation as simply a necessary step to the glorious future they live in, and be amused at the parochialness of the people of the time who were worried about it. They could use the metaphor of an egg; shortly before the chick hatches, the egg environment is getting pretty nasty, full of waste products that have nowhere to go. The chick can project that death is certainly around the corner if they don't stop growing soon. But it can't stop growing; it must hatch. (Before you go "But jerf...!" and start trying to tear that metaphor apart, bear in mind I'm writing from the perspective of an already-glorious future here, not claiming it is absolutely something true of the present.) Another heterodox idea I've considered is that the future may well mock us for our concern over the environment when the real threat was technological tyranny the whole time, except the tyranny probably wouldn't let alone learn that much about the present time.... But the general idea holds; there are plenty of future threats that may turn out in the end to be far more dangerous than the environment and for it to have been a near waste of time in the end to put so much effort into the environment instead of dealing with $THREAT. To get here, I'm also projecting into the future the subconscious idea that most of us carry that there is something inevitable about the way the future went and that somehow people should have known. A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. So in the future, if some other disaster overtakes humanity, I fully expect the future to project back on to us a belief that we should in the here-and-now already know about this threat and have been dealing with what seems to them to be patently obviously a bigger deal than the environment. In the real here-and-now, where the future is not known, taking good care of the environment is a rational move. But in the future they may really be cursing us for not throwing billions of dollars at friendly AI. Or whoknows what.

ewams 8y ago

I've had this same conversation but concerning ages when normal things happen. Look at when people got married and had children in 1860 vs 1960 vs 2018. In this short amount of time people went from having children being normal from 12-14 to 18-30, to 25-40. Yes people still have children at young ages but it is more of a norm to do it later. Just look at all the HN articles talking about that the last couple years. Then listen to conversations when you hear about a 22 year old marrying a 16 year old, things get said like "pedophile" and "gross" and "thats just wrong." Even though not too long ago that was normal. And that feedback is just from the States. Other countries and regions are different. Maybe here 18 is a magical age where you become an adult but in the far East its 16. In Amazonia it is 13. (I just made those numbers up, I do not know). Makes you wonder, what is normal or moral to me that is just learned behavior and not really normal or moral?

pjc50 8y ago
These things aren't just arbitary changes, they're part of the consent revolution and the general post-Enlightentment search to have reasons why we do things rather than just the arbitary tyranny of ""normal"". > 13 This stuff depends on place as well as time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-Balls-Scandal-How-Jerry-Lee-Lewis-marriage-13-year-old-wrecked-career.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-B...
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
This is actually inaccurate. You are portraying it as a monotonic trend towards older marriages, but it was actually a local minimum in the 50s and 60s. The average age of marriage in 1890 was roughly the same as 1990 for men and 1980 for women[1]. After that typical marriage ages dropped gradually until the 50s and 60s and then started rising again. [1] https://www.infoplease.com/us/marital-status/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010 https://www.infoplease.com/us/marital-status/median-age-firs...