Eurocentricity in History Class

I am writing this post on Martin Luther King, Jr. day, a day set aside to honor the leader of nonviolent protests who brought equality to a segregated country. The reason I am writing this, and not furiously scribbling down notes, is that my school, Highland Park Senior, celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. day by granting all students temporary freedom. The elementary school I attended did not give MLK day off, however, and instead used it as an opportunity to educate children on the history of African Americans and segregation in America.

obviously, we learned well

Throughout elementary school, we were intensively educated on the importance of integration and tolerance. And with good reason: education works almost frighteningly well. In many parts of the world, education is still used to instill values of racism and violent hatred into children. Teaching tolerance in schools has brought us from a segregated country to a black president in about forty years, which is impressive if you consider how long it took us to invent toilet paper (thousands of years). 

Through education, we have greatly succeeded in mitigating racism in main-stream America. However, once we are taught not to hate black people, we almost immediately forget they exist. Crack open a copy of A History of the Modern World, the current history book used by Highland Park, and you'll find a map of Europe in the "geographical background" section, to the exclusion of a map of any other region. The preface of the textbook explains that it "makes no claim to be a world history," "focuses primarily on the developments of the west," and "stresses the influence of European societies." All non-European history in the textbook, which is scarce, is presented only as it applies to Europe, and non-European history that does not in some way involve Europe is not present. 

Durning history class one day, I discovered that my teacher, who can eloquently describe how Rasputin affected the Russian Revolution for two hours if provoked, did not have any idea who Joseph Mobutu, the dictator who ruled Sub-Saharan Africa's largest country for nearly forty years, was. Nor should she be expected to: Mobutu, and the Great African War that succeeded his reign, are not present in any of our textbooks, and are entirely ignored by most schools and historians in general. It appears that as high schoolers we don't know anything about black people, aside from the fact that we should be nice to them.

Another excerpt from A History of the Modern World 

The lack of contemporary African history in schools has led Africa to become everything our tolerance education has tried to prevent it from becoming: the giant "dark" continent that appears on our maps, but not in our knowledge. The particularly troubling aspect of our history textbooks is not that it only teaches European history, but that it teaches all history through the lens of European society. In America, we are not European, and besides the fact that our classes are delivered in a European language, schools do not have any obligation to teach history from a European perspective. In American history classes, we are somewhat perplexingly choosing to look at history from the point of view of Europe. 

Meanwhile, African history is relegated to special events and national holidays, as if learning African history were some worthy cause, not a necessity. I have always found it ridiculous that we should set aside special time to learn about any certain minority group, as if to compensate for our lack of attention towards that group during the rest of the year. One serious issue with "black history" is this: history is far too interwoven for the teaching of just one group to be relevant. Imagine if we tried to fragment historical education into the histories of all ethnic groups: three months of Asian history, followed by two months for European history, and then a month of Latin America. I suppose we would then allow three weeks for Middle Eastern history, followed by a month of North American history and a week of Australian history, before closing out the year with our typical "black history month." This thinking brought Morgan Freeman, pictured in the quote above, to speak out against black history month, saying: "you're going to relegate my history to a month? Black history is American history." Freeman is always so good at explaining things. 

The need for greater education of Africa in our schools is all too apparent. When I had the pleasure of meeting Chingwell Motumbu recently, a former Congolese citizen who started first step initiative, she stressed to me how education was the most important factor in lifting the Democratic Republic of the Congo out of poverty. If we are to lift ourselves out of our own bubble of eurocentricity and into global relevance, it will require the same equal attention to education that is worldwide and multi-cultural, and this includes education of Africa, not just as it applies to the West, but education that highlights the value of African society independently. 

It has been suggested that history remains Eurocentric because history is taught as a study of "us" and who "we" are and where "we" are going as a people. But what are Americans if not a conglomeration of worldwide cultures? In fact, what is modern civilization if not a conglomeration of influences from across the globe, not merely, as my textbook implies, made up of the influence of European societies. As a global society, we all benefit from the contributions and the histories of other societies, not just as they apply to our own, but in their own right. 


written by Abe Clark, January 21, 2013

(actually an earhorn)

written by Abe Clark, January 19, 2013

On the Worldwide Imbalance of Labor

Sometime during the incredibly heated and incredibly irrelevant Republican primary of 2012, evangelical candidate Rick Santorum stood in front of a large crowd after pulling off a narrow victory over Mitt Romney in Iowa. "My dad taught me over and over again: Work hard, work hard, and work hard," Santorum patriotically delivered. The applause that followed this statement reflected how perfectly this statement illustrates the American belief in Capitalism. Even Democrats could not argue with this: no one would say they are "against" working hard. While few Democrats would disagree with Santorum's platform that working hard prevents poverty, fewer still would disagree with the idea that hard work pays off.

Remember, if you will, back to 2008, during the last election. Remember what the most prominent issue of that election was? Chances are, you remember it being the same as it was this election: the economy. That made sense back then: the economy sucked. Unemployment was climbing; by 2009, it was nearing 10%, and the country was terrified of economic ruin. The "great recession," as we called it back then, would eventually end. A couple of years after President Obama took office, the economy began to slowly improve. The unemployment rate dropped below 8%, and President Obama was rewarded with a second term. Now image if, in 2009, the economy had not gotten better, and instead had become worse...and worse...and worse...
This is the economic situation that grips Greece, which currently has an unemployment rate of about 26.8% percent; approximately what the United States sustained during the Great Depression.

In a recent poll conducted in eight European countries, a plurality of citizens in five of those countries rated Greece as the "least hardworking" country in Europe. In case you are unaware or a fish, Greece is currently in an extremely difficult economic situation, with unemployment and debt that have led to violent riots. Greece itself was the only country in the poll that considered themselves the hardest working country in Europe, yet they were right: according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), citizens of Greece work longer hours than any other European country. It would appear from this study that hard work does not pay off as it should.

Interestingly, every country except for Greece ranked Germany as the hardest working country, yet it actually works the second-least according to the OECD. Germany's reputation for being an extremely hard-working country has most likely risen from its resilience to Europe's economic issues: in 2012, Germany reported just a 6.70 percent unemployment rate, far below the European Union average. This study showed that, for some reason, we seem to equate hard work with success. In fact, the true correlation is closer to the opposite: Matthew Yglesias wrote for Slate magazine that "Countries aren't rich because their people work hard. When people are poor, that's when they work hard." 

When we equate wealth with hard work, we corrupt our ability to see where our work is truly going. Citizens of highly developed Norway work an average of 1413 hours per year, one of the lowest amounts in the OECD's study, but pull in a median annual income of $31,011, among the highest. The hardest working non-European countries in the study, South Korea, Chile, and Israel, make the 20th, 32nd, and 25th highest per year in median income, after most highly-developed European countries. Of course it is true that hard work pays off, but it only pays off in the right context. Capitalism does not, contrary to what many think, create an environment where hard work is rewarded with economic advancement. Rather, it fosters an economic system that rewards those who have capital with more capital.

Writing about the terribly sad global economic system that hurts many countries reminded me of this funny cartoon I once read. 

It isn't the fault of highly-developed countries like Norway and France that other countries work hard for little benefit. Those countries should be commended for figuring out a way around difficult labor. Rather, it is the capitalistic worldwide economy that so many countries embrace, and that so many countries believe will solve their economic issues.  Capitalism dictates that hard work is rewarded with economic advancement. In reality, the Capitalist system rewards those countries that are already economically stable, and don't need to rely on long work hours for economic security. The data taken by the OECD shows that no country is truly struggling because of a lack of hard work. The fact that so many people in Europe thought Greece was a "lazy" country is proof of how far Capitalist ideology has become engrained into our society. 


written by Abe Clark, January 15, 2013