My professors do it again

[anubis88]

Incredible. Just came from my class, and the professor said, that if anyone wants to know how the Romans fought against the Germans, they should watch Gladiator.
He then continued by telling that the Romans won so many battles against barbarians because of their higher intelect , ( he said the Romans used tactics, on the other side barbarians just attacked headless).
I mean not to mention the roman use of artilery in that battle as if it was ww2, they never threw their pillas, and they fought with a broken formation....
He then also claimed that the Germans that won at teutoberg forest fought naked or barely naked, with only scraps of cloth....

I must admit, I was like wtf during the entire class
Anyone had any similar experiences?

[brymht]

Thankfully no...... Greco Roman studies at my school have tended to be fairly accurate.

In fact, my professors usually pointed to movies to see "OK< This looks cool, but it was NOTHING like this".

Unless its the Rome series. The few battle scenes they had in that were absolutely spot on.

[Metalstrm]

Wait, isn't what he said true? :P

Anyway, depends on what kind of professor. If it's a physics professor I wouldn't really be surprised, but if it's a history professor specialising in Rome, well, that's another story.

[alatar]

"OK< This looks cool, but it was NOTHING like this".

Yup I get that a lot, save in rare situations where we are told what is spot on.

[EdwardL]

Anubis I must ask, where do you live?

It seems somewhere, a government is misappropriating educational funding.

[Dhampir]

Anyone had any similar experiences?

No.

But I did have a professor who was teaching the Gilded Age forget about the Progressives.

[Respenus]

Luckily no. He always says that movies are meant for entertainment and are nice to look at, but nothing more.

God, if I had a professor like that, I'd kill myself. Arguing with him all the time. Must be a bore. And then they wonder why children aren't interested in classes. Ya duh! Those few that follow the subject get mentally killed by stupid professors.

@anubis88: Does Piran have a highschool or do you have to go somewhere else?

Oh, and I can't wait till you reach Slovenian lands in the Holy Roman Empire and the Counts of Celje. You'll have to film it for me. I guess I'll probably fall from my chair.

[lobf]

Unless its the Rome series. The few battle scenes they had in that were absolutely spot on.

...maybe :)

[anubis88]

Luckily no. He always says that movies are meant for entertainment and are nice to look at, but nothing more.

God, if I had a professor like that, I'd kill myself. Arguing with him all the time. Must be a bore. And then they wonder why children aren't interested in classes. Ya duh! Those few that follow the subject get mentally killed by stupid professors.

@anubis88: Does Piran have a highschool or do you have to go somewhere else?

Oh, and I can't wait till you reach Slovenian lands in the Holy Roman Empire and the Counts of Celje. You'll have to film it for me. I guess I'll probably fall from my chair.

LOL, it's not in Piran, it's in the freacking Filozofski Fakulteti (slovenian college, that has a history department), history department!. Granted, he's not an expert in Rome, his a Medieval period teacher, but i mean c'monn.

@EdwardL
No, we kinda have a pretty good schooling program. I'm from Slovenia

[Lord Smart]

This is how i was taught about the Roman time in High school. In the history book there was a picture of two man. The first was a clean noble looking Roman soldier in well that is a no brainer in LS. On the right there was a stupid ugly hairy looking Celt,with a bearskin on. He even got a huge stone club. Of course the wole chapter was about the great nobele Romans were,who brought things as sewers and laws and the like.

[anubis88]

LOL, it's not in Piran, it's in the freacking Filozofski Fakulteti (slovenian college in Ljubljana, that has a history department), history department!. Granted, he's not an expert in Rome, his a Medieval period teacher, but i mean c'monn. That's just wierd

@EdwardL
No, we kinda have a pretty good schooling program. I'm from Slovenia

sss

[Respenus]

Well Anubis what can one expect if all they offer on their Open door day is a magnificent tours of the Path of Brotherhood and Unity and that's the pinnacle of their programme.

No wonder I want to escape.

[Beefy187]

Considering that Marcus Aurelius and his general was not soo briliant like those in Julius Caesar's time, Its possible that fight against the Germans often went terribly. Few things went wrong in Gladiator battle scene

1. They gave the higher land to the enemy
2. They didnt throw pilla
3. They broke formation and fought one on one
4. Way too much Artilary..

Maybe it was really like that coz Marcus Aurelius and his crew wasnt that great.

[eggthief]

Some of u dont know how spoiled u are. Go to high school in the Netherlands, you'll get one month of ancient history and its way to spread out with no details at all and the rest of your school period will go about how cool we were for enslaving Indonesia and how much more we suffered from ww2 than all the other countries and jews together.

[Dhampir]

Some of u dont know how spoiled u are. Go to high school in the Netherlands, you'll get one month of ancient history and its way to spread out with no details at all and the rest of your school period will go about how cool we were for enslaving Indonesia and how much more we suffered from ww2 than all the other countries and jews together.

I don't remember what was taught when I was in High School except that it was all wrong.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Some of u dont know how spoiled u are. Go to high school in the Netherlands, you'll get one month of ancient history and its way to spread out with no details at all and the rest of your school period will go about how cool we were for enslaving Indonesia and how much more we suffered from ww2 than all the other countries and jews together.

I'd disagree, but somehow I get the feeling we've been to some really very different form of highschool in the Netherlands...

[blitzkrieg80]

try school in the US- where they STILL teach that people thought the world was flat during Columbus' time... wtf- i guess it's like 'Thanksgiving' - thanks for being foolish enough not to keep us alive despite our own stupidity, oh yeah, here's some 'blankets'

yeah- you really don't want to hear what i think of Gladiator's Germans (I do like the movie though but not for historical accuracy)... you can see one guy with a horned helmet

btw, I took Medieval history at my university (some of the few European history classes available- i got more informaton from my English classes [Old Norse, Old English] but that's because my professor was so good and offered such), but my professor in medieval wasn't so bad as what you describe (pretty pathetic- talkabout lying on your resume ), but the teacher wasn't too knowledgeable on barbarians either and the subject matter was entirely Byzantine/Greco-Roman, Inheritors of Rome BS and not about the true Germanic and Celtic cultural founding which lies behind of 90% of what we know of during that time: not including land-law, 'courtiers', and tax-collection oh can't forget divine kingship: whipty-doo. but it makes sense though, since there isn't as much written and we don't have so much to look at period. Unfortunately, truely rewarding information is very hard to find concerning barbarian culture.

[Dhampir]

try school in the US- where they STILL teach that people thought the world was flat during Columbus' time...

Where? I've never encountered such a thing.

[blitzkrieg80]

elementary school and more. it's pretty widespread.

[Dhampir]

elementary school and more. it's pretty widespread.

Never heard of it. Sounds like an urban myth.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

It isn't really purposefully taught, but for the most part every teacher I had in elementry school said that Columbus thought the world was round and everyone else thought he was crazy. I think the teachers all thought it is a fact.

They all say this even though everybody knew the world was round in Columbus' day and simply knew an accurate measurement of the circumfence. By measuring the circumference, they though there was way too much sea between Europe and China. Columbus was actually stupider than the average person and said that the circumference was less that everyone though, making China just over the horizon. Turns out they were right about the circumference but there was more than just sea out there.

BTW, Columbus was a racist, pediphile, and happily profitted from the intentional genicide of people.

[DefenderofFuture]

Columbus was also an idiot.

I'm at the University of Wisconsin, and my professor took the first half of the course telling us how the Gauls were better in every way than the Romans (I exaggerate, but she spent about as much time on the Gauls' technology as she did on the Romans' [it was a survey class]). A bit of a reactionary position, but it's a warm welcome compared to the common teaching that the barbarians were mental infants with clubs.

[Decimus Attius Arbiter]

The only good comment about Gladiator from my Roman history professor was that it correctly portrayed the fact that no patrician would take becoming a slave shall we say, quietly. Its a good movie and we see pila in the Colosseum scenes.

[cmacq]

Columbus was also an idiot.

I'm at the University of Wisconsin, and my professor took the first half of the course telling us how the Gauls were better in every way than the Romans (I exaggerate, but she spent about as much time on the Gauls' technology as she did on the Romans' [it was a survey class]). A bit of a reactionary position, but it's a warm welcome compared to the common teaching that the barbarians were mental infants with clubs.

And by Gauls she meant the Hellenized Kelts living in what is today central and eastern France? If one is going to be obtuse, maybe she should get the details correct. As with the Romans, these Gauls gained most of their technology by way of the western Greeks. For all they contributed, those poor chaps really don't get much play, do they?

[Sarkiss]

BTW, Columbus was a racist, pediphile, and happily profitted from the intentional genicide of people.

and how many folks back then were not (apart from pedophile that is)?
Columbus was a product of his time... and a pedophile lol

[Chris1959]

It is rather frightening how most peoples ideas about history are derived from Hollywood!
With regard to Columbus being a peadophile, surely in the C15th unless it was with boys there was no age of consent in a legal sense.

[Hax]

Yeah, there very little doubt existed in 1492 concerning whether the earth was round or not, the fact is nobody tried it.

And the church didn't want to admit it. Everyone knew it, but nobody had written it down officially.

[Chris1959]

Maybe they didn't want to admit it until someone proved it, how dumb would they have looked if expedition after expedition kept sailing of the edge

[Tristuskhan]

This thread reminds me of an history lesson when I was a wannabe-lumberjack.
The teacher, not a bad guy, said the Royal Navy had scuttled the French fleet in Mers-El-Kebir in 1942.
My smile was sufficient to make him understand we should speak a little after the lesson... But I did not question his words in public, it was useless, especially facing twenty wannabe-lumberjacks, that would have been a very bad thing for his authority.

He made the correction on the next lesson.
The French fleet scuttled herself in Toulon 1942, in order to prevent seizing by the German. And it was (preventing seizure by axis) the reason why the RN attacked Mers-El-Kebir in 1940. He also admitted that the Brits had no choice in 1940 and that this affair was somehow justified by the might and quality of the french fleet at that time.

[Strategos Alexandros]

We do nothing before the battle of Hastings in my school. So far we have done in 3 years:

2 weeks on Norman conquest
a term on Henry VIII
2 lessons on the English civil war
Georgian and Victorian towns in England
More Tudors
French civil war
World war 1
World war 2