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.

[lobf]

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

...maybe :)

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Jolt]

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.

..Wait. Didn't they fight like the Gladiator? I thought that when the Romans used Testudo formation, the barbarians tried to poke their spears inside but couldn't, then the Romans would quickly break formation and stab the surprised barbarians to death. That's what I learned in my Roman History classes. :P

Testudo Romans! That would make an awesome faction!

[Gnaeus Servilius]

I take it then that i'm not the only one that has to listen to people who are like, 'well I read one paragraph on the EB unit description so that's how it was.'

Basically it annoys me when people say something like: 'This one film or whatever is completley infallible and that was how it was done.' Whatever happened to comparing sources and making a logical decision based on a wide variety of texts and other kinds of evidence?

[Watchman]

But that would take effort!!

[Gnaeus Servilius]

I know that your joking, but that is my point. Why do people try and argue something that they have practically no knowledge about? Is it just me who finds being told the facts of history by someone who has never even bothered to do a little research just a tiny bit annoying? (I'm not trying to antagonize anyone here)

And this isn't unique to the subject of history. I had to listen to someone telling me that there were cavemen walking about during the age of dinosaurs! He must have watched the flintstones and thought, Hey well it was on telly so it must be true!

[Uticensis]

I’ve come to this forum a lot, especially in the past days since 1.1 came out, but never posted before. But seeing this topic, I just had to comment and get this off my chest to people who can understand my frustration.

I’m a Classics major at my University and I needed another credit in the department, but I’ve taken most of the classes and have a busy schedule, so I signed up for the Intro to Roman History class. I know the teacher well because she is the chair of the department and in all fairness knows a lot about Archaic Greek art. That being said, here are some of the things I have had to sit through this semester in her lectures:

-Gaul was the ancient name for Britain (She said this when describing Caesar’s conquest. Not just a slip up, she had a map of Britian on her PowerPoint listed Commentarii de Bello Gallico).
-A tribunis pleblis had to be a Patrician (Clodius must have wished). She went on about how this kept the tribunes from wanting to get through land reforms.
-Augustus turned all the all the provinces with legions into one “super province” that he was governor of (I suppose a dumbed down explanation of his reforms)
-Mark Antony lost the standards to the Parthians (He was defeated by them too, I know, but she never even mentioned Crassus).
-The Dacians were part of the Roman Empire who rebelled, so Trajan conquered them.
-African Elephants were too small to carry a person.
-The Selukids traded all their lands East of Syria for their 500 elephants (I guess so she wouldn’t have to explain the messy details of what happened over there.)
-Beside all that (and much more that I can’t remember off the top of my head), she mentions anything in Seutonius, Historia Augusta, ect. as if it were fact.

She’s the chair of the classics department at a major, well-respected University. And she says such things. It drives me crazy.

[Xurr]

-Gaul was the ancient name for Britain (She said this when describing Caesar’s conquest. Not just a slip up, she had a map of Britian on her PowerPoint listed Commentarii de Bello Gallico).
-A tribunis pleblis had to be a Patrician (Clodius must have wished). She went on about how this kept the tribunes from wanting to get through land reforms.
-Augustus turned all the all the provinces with legions into one “super province” that he was governor of (I suppose a dumbed down explanation of his reforms)
-Mark Antony lost the standards to the Parthians (He was defeated by them too, I know, but she never even mentioned Crassus).
-The Dacians were part of the Roman Empire who rebelled, so Trajan conquered them.
-African Elephants were too small to carry a person.
-The Selukids traded all their lands East of Syria for their 500 elephants (I guess so she wouldn’t have to explain the messy details of what happened over there.)
-Beside all that (and much more that I can’t remember off the top of my head), she mentions anything in Seutonius, Historia Augusta, ect. as if it were fact.

She’s the chair of the classics department at a major, well-respected University. And she says such things. It drives me crazy.

You should sue and get your money back for that class. You had a reasonable expectation that it would provide accurate information and clearly the class failed to deliver.

[Gnaeus Servilius]

I’ve come to this forum a lot, especially in the past days since 1.1 came out, but never posted before. But seeing this topic, I just had to comment and get this off my chest to people who can understand my frustration.

Listen, you just have the same problem as anyone who studies a subject at a higher level. Basically you will have to listen to a lot of ignorant people who know nothing about a subject lecture you on what you do and don't know. I've encountered these kind of people for years, they don't care about facts they just want to shout you down most of the time because in their small minds it makes them right. However there are some really good tutors and people in general who are just interested in learning and getting to the truth. Not just
trying to force their own innacurate and narrow minded opinion on you. Keep an open mind, but also keep your eyes peeled for cretins.

[Uticensis]

Listen, you just have the same problem as anyone who studies a subject at a higher level. Basically you will have to listen to a lot of ignorant people who know nothing about a subject lecture you on what you do and don't know. I've encountered these kind of people for years, they don't care about facts they just want to shout you down most of the time because in their small minds it makes them right. However there are some really good tutors and people in general who are just interested in learning and getting to the truth.

I know. I've had a lot of good professors. This one just drives me crazy. Not so much because I know how wrong she is: that just mildly annoys me. But what gets me really angry is the people who just accept what she says, never read primary sources, and believe these things to be true. They are essentially being lied to.
And then one day they might download EB and get engaged, come to this forum and complain, because the Romans aren't wearing Lorica Segmentata when the Romans really did, because that's what all the Roman soldiers were wearing in all the pictures their college professor showed them. And elephants with towers

[Gnaeus Servilius]

But what gets me really angry is the people who just accept what she says, never read primary sources, and believe these things to be true. They are essentially being lied to.

These people who just accept one opinion at face value do so because they either don't care or they fall into the trap that a lot of people do, which is basically: 'well they said it, I like the sound of that, I'll just argue and argue until
anyone with two brain cells to rub together just gives up' If they are ever put amongst genuine people who are intelligent they just show themselves up. The problem is that the ignorant people vastly outnumber the people who can have an intelligent debate. I've argued points which I have studied and debated with other students and when you prove to the ignorant people that they are wrong, they will just say something like 'I don't care anyway' or 'who cares, what's the point of studying history anyway?' With regard to your tutor, perhaps you should go over her head? I wouldn't even bother challenging her directly it would probably just get ugly.

I personally love it when everything I thought to be true is turned upside down!

[Uticensis]

I wouldn't even bother challenging her directly it would probably just get ugly.

I've gone up to her after class when she made some of her most outrageous blunders, and we are both polite. She knows that I'm a classics major and that I know what I'm talking about. She just goes, "oh, thanks." One day she said, "oh, you're always correcting me," in a joking manner. But I'm not. I let most of it go. And I don't say anything during class because I don't want to embarrass her.
But again, I don't really care what she thinks, but about all the other students (mostly freshmen)who come to college naturally expecting to be taught facts in their history class, and don't know enough to realize they are not.

[cmacq]

She’s the chair of the classics department at a major, well-respected University. And she says such things. It drives me crazy.

Are you serious; she's the chair??? What level is this course, not that it matters if the dept chair is the instructor? Uticensis, I hope to hell this is an American University?