History really, really matters - two plus cases

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/LD09Dh01.html


Japan and Korea thumb a poisoned ledger


In the summer of 2007, 34 Japanese and Korean scholars were selected to participate in the second round of the Japan-South Korea joint history project. Since the release of their report in late March, it is becoming clear that very little progress has been made - many of the same issues from the first round of this project which commenced in 2001 remain unresolved. The first round report was issued in 2005.

Professor Cho Kwang of Korea University, and Professor Yasushi Toriumi (emeritus) at the University of Tokyo are serving as the co-chairmen of this joint history project.

In 2001, the first round commenced following a very heated row between the two countries over a Japanese history textbook. In 2009, the release of another history textbook in Japan - this time intended for Japanese junior high readers - again poisoned the atmosphere because it contained what many Koreans considered to be false and negative content.

-snip-

"Yes, conservative trends in approved Japanese textbooks continue. One could note, for example, that while currently there are three social studies textbooks for elementary school use that clearly identify the disputed islands, Takeshima , as Japanese territory, among the batch of 280 elementary school textbooks recently approved for use from the 2011 academic year, five social studies texts do so," said Dickinson. "One could also point to the large number of references to Japanese traditional culture and to moral lessons in this batch of approved texts, even in science volumes, which are not the typical outlet for such lessons."

Koreans find this sort of textbook-related activity distasteful, and it along with the unwelcome and lingering presence of the organizations such as the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, or Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho wo Tsukuru Kai, cannot be taken for granted or overlooked by the Japanese. The society is deemed a repeat offender by Seoul as its agenda includes keeping alive the notion that Japan liberated Asia via the Daitowa Senso or "The Greater East Asian War" - Japan's name for the Pacific Theater of World War II - and pushing a revisionist ideology on Japanese society as a whole.

-snip-

Regarding the need for South Korea, China and Japan to create and publish a common history textbook, Foreign Minister Okada has already endorsed the concept. However, last year, Okada tied the future publication of this textbook to the completion of the joint history projects. <3>
-long snip-
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http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/general/2010/04/20104673737483233.html


A lesson in history


-snip video-

A lesson in history reveals how the absence of a common history textbook in Lebanese schools highlights the lack of consensus between Lebanon's religious communities over interpreting their past - and their future.

In 1989 Lebanese parliamentarians met in Saudi Arabia to end the Lebanese civil war, which had been raging since 1975.

One aspect of the Taif peace accord they signed dealt with education. The politicians agreed that civic education should be uniform across the country in order to promote national accord and that a common history textbook should be created.

After three years of work, historians presented a curriculum they considered to be suitable for Lebanese of all backgrounds.

The book was published but its distribution to schools was suspended following political disagreement over its content.

Now, two decades after the civil war ended, the state still allows Lebanese schools the freedom to choose their own history textbooks.

'Nobody is objective'

-snip-

Today's Lebanese students sit side-by-side in their history classes and learn about the Phoenicians and the Romans, the Ottomans and the Greeks, the French Revolution and the world wars, just as their parents used to.

But when it comes to Lebanon's more recent history, their schools teach them nothing, because modern history is not part of the curriculum in Lebanon.

-long snip-

One Lebanese student explains: "We memorise information for the official exams. But there is a difference between memorising and learning. We study history to learn from it because he who doesn't know his own history will not be able to write his future."
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and then there is our Texas changing history, omitting history, etc.

Va. leaving out slavery.

and ALL the WORLD'S history leaving out women!!!!

the world's historians need a big shake up and we need more women historians.

HISTORY MATTERS

subject we ever learn.

Otherwise we just keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

And the history has to be objective, written up by someone with no stake in the matter, or we just add to the errors and biases.

And that he had learned in school, in Texas public schools, that slavery was taught as something that was very beneficial to blacks.

Fucking A!!!!!

Praise the lord!

(Of course, legal importation of slaves ended two generations before the civil war, and most slaves did NOT get Jesus because most slave owners didn't think of them as human and needing Jesus. In fact, it was, in places, illegal to preach to slaves. But never mind that.)

nt