Not so much knowledge in history

[Rodrico Stak]

Perhaps not the most extreme example of this, but the first one I can think of:

We were learning about ancient Egypt in my humanities class:

My Humanities teacher: ...ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over 3000 years, ending after the end of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who were Greeks who ruled Egypt on behalf of the Persian Empire.
Me: Um... actually it was Alexander the Great's empire.
Someone else: No! It was the Roman Empire!
Humanities teacher: That's right, it was the Roman Empire.
Me: ... no, it was the empire of Alexander the Great.
Humanities teacher: Ok, that's right. But it wasn't really involved with his empire, they just happened to be contemporary.
Me: ... (thinking: this is hopeless, I'm not even going to argue this further. Let's just ignore the fact that he was one of Alexander's generals.)

[Zeibek]

This doesn't totally relate to history, but the ignorance behind it is amusing enough. In Junior High during our Civics lesson we looked at the online database of Finnish names over the past century. The teacher picked someone called Muhammed and asked us how was it possible that an Islamic name appeared in Finland in 1902. Here's the discussion that followed:

Someone: What, there were Somalis here?
Me: No, it's most obviously a Tatar name.
Teacher: Yes, it was a Tatar name. They were brought here by the Czar to quel the unruly provinces as elite troops.
Someone else: What, the Somput? (Somppu is derogatory term for Somalis, more or less like nigger)
Third someone: Yeah, I bet they were biological weapons.
*Whole class starts laughing frantically*

It probably sounds only racist and ignorant but at the time it seemed just incredibly absurd to me. I laughed with everyone else, but more at the absurdity of the comments. Then I experienced this great surge of feeling superior in comparison to almost everybody else there. It was a scary feeling. Almost as scary as the fact that I was going to an international school where like a fourth of the students were either foreign or had a foreign parent.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

It's one thing when a highschool level gets something wrong or even at the college level, but for me some of the biggest events such as these have occured when watching the History Channel. There have been times when I just had to scream at the TV. One time a show said, "...when the Romans arrived in Egypt in the third century BC..." I don't know if they meant the Greeks / Ptolemaioi or if they really meant the Romans and had the wrong time because they then talked about mummies...

[theoldbelgian]

this what was in our textbooks about our very forefathers the old begians:
the old belgians lived in huts, lived of hunt and fishing.
they also threwed dice and drunk beer
now doesn't that sound nice

[Tellos Athenaios]

To me it realy depends - there are so many areas of which I myself don't know anything at all... Discussions like these are an easy 'victory', only people similarly minded really attend, and they would agree with you. Despite the fact you are not very likely to know much about it either... For instance...

I find it mildly amusing that quite a few of the older people around (where I live, I mean) are likely to complain about the lack of knowledge on dates, times etcetera among the younger generations. Invariably they will only know a couple themselves -- and usually among those is the absolute pinaccle of insigificant battles ever fought: 1600 battle of Nieuwpoort. If I ask them what's so special about 1898..?

Similarly they'll go on and on about how they didn't have pocket calculators (and frankly there's something about that which isn't completely 100% waste of time) yet ask anyone of them to compute the highest prime number under 100? (Answer: 97.)

[||Lz3||]

once, my philosophy teacher said the roman empire was created in 800bc... and that alexander was after it... emm what?

I tried to help but it was hopeless so... meh

[Legosoldier]

once, my philosophy teacher said the roman empire was created in 800bc... and that alexander was after it... emm what?

I tried to help but it was hopeless so... meh

Suppose he meant that the city of Rome was founded that time?

[General Appo]

I have quite a general knowledge pf pretty much all aspects of history, which really none of my classmates have. Of course, when it comes to the antique I am somewhat more then just generally knowledgable, and in the eyes of my classmates a true expert.
We don´t discuss history a lot in my school, but the few times we do, it generally sucks. My teacher is pretty okay, but you know, he´s follows the book and really don´t know enough about every subject to point out where it´s wrong.
Admittedly I am 14 and should perhaps not expect any sort of higher education yet, but seriously, we saw Gladiator during history class!

Oh, just remember this old post by me. I was rather aggravated when making it, but my viewpoints still stand.

"ARGGH!! I wasted 80 minutes today attending a history class in my school. We were reading about the middle to late Roman republic, and I couldn´t believe the bullshit we were being told. Firstly my teacher tells everybody plus writes on the board in big letters that the Roman Senate always had 300 members, during the middle and late republic. Ridiculous.
Then he went on saying (reading straight from our books of course) that the Senators were above the Generals on the social pyramid, completely ignoring that nearly all Generals were Senators, and high-ranking such. He also made it sound like the Consuls had nothing to do with the military, and that the Comitia Tributa (of course he didn´t call it that) was arranged very democraticly, with everyones vote counting equally.
After hearing some sensational bullshit about Hannibal and the Second Punic War and how he used 500 elephants in every battle to defeat the Romans until he was defeated (not known how), we skipped ahead to the Third one, were the Romans killed every single person in Carthage, burnt the city until no trace of it was left, salted the earth and abandoned it forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And EVER!!! The fact that most of the population were sold into slavery, that several meters high buildings were left standing, that the salting of the earth is just an old myth, and that Carthage was the third biggest city in the Roman Empire, were all completely forgotten.
Now we skipped again to Gaius Marius, the great and noble dude who not only defeated a gigantic horde of savage Germans, but completely reformed the Roman army, kicking the worthless skirmishers and cavalry out of it. Who needs supportive troops when you´ve got Legionaries, the best men in the world, all worth at least 50 of those hairy barbarians, who certainly didn´t invent the soap.
Now we skip again (no mention of Gracchi brothers, Marius later career, Sulla or anything else) to the noble Spartacus. A savage wilderbeast from the darkness of the barbarian lands fighting for his freedom, Spartacus was a mixture of Wallace in Braveheart and Conan the Barbarian, and usually killed about 400 Romans all by himself in every battle, until finally the evil and ruthless Pompey through deceitful ways managed to kill him and crucify tens of thousands of slaves.
Spartacus certainly wasn´t an educated man, and it certainly wasn´t someone named Crassus who defeated him. The whole inclusion of Pompey is just to set the stage for the greatest hero of them all, the great and noble, the saviour of the Roman Republic and the whole world, Gaius Julius CEASAR!!!! This incredibly nice guy not only defeated the vicious Gauls, but also fought for the freedom of all Romans against the evil coalition of Pompey and the Senate. When Ceasar finally won he was brutally murdered by the evil Brutus, but his noble son killed that son of a bitch, and after the wierdo Antony and his Egyptian whore had killed eachother made himself Emperor, and saved the Republic!! Hooray!!!
Now I´m just wondering, where the fu*k did the people who wrote this book get their infromation? Because of quick Wiki-fuc*ing-pedia search in the English, Swedish and fuc*ing Icelandic version will tell you, THAT THERE WERE NO MOTHERFUC*ING 300 PEOPLE IN THE ROMAN FUC*ING SENATE!!! SHIT!!!!!!!! *headbangs keyboard. tfgvbvyhbujik"

[ludwag]

ouch. why diddnt you finish the argue? I had some of the same. Where my history-teacher said that the empire of alexander was bigger than the persian. but i said no, but he refused to accept. We was talking about the size. But then i did something stupid: i mentioned that alexanders empire was greater becouse it included greece. and he started relying upon that.

i havent learnt anything in my historic class exept the name of some ice-age guy. not even in the history book. i am looking forvard to start learning history for real after i finish highscool.

[penguinking]

My history textbook in an ancient history class I took has almost nothing on the Celts, other than one sentence about the Gallic Wars ("Within seven years, he conquered what is now Northern France and Belgium and invaded Britain") and one more sentence about how some Gauls fought with Hannibal ("The Gauls, who were enemies of the Romans, joined Hannibal and boosted his numbers to almost 50,000").
Therefore, our class spent no time on them.

[Celtic_Punk]

i havent learnt anything in my historic class exept the name of some ice-age guy. not even in the history book. i am looking forvard to start learning history for real after i finish highscool.

OTZI!!!!!!!!!
WOOT!

it was the same thing with me Appo in history class. My peers were total retards, I helped teach the class with my teacher. She was absolutely brilliant! She was a good Art/History/Philosophy/Liberal studies teacher. In the eyes of my peers I was a fucking professor... and i know dick all compared to the people on this forum about antiquity. I know a lot about WWII though, that was my first passion.

IIRC our history text book said pre-roman Briton and Irish Celts were smelly uncivilized savages who committed human sacrifice and ate the entrails to prove their devotion to the Gods. Also it said that Caesar conquered Briton (right obviously) but never mentioned briton throwing off the shackles of Roman rule. THEY ALSO never mentioned that they never took Caledonia. THEY ALSO said that Alexander was a big poof who conquered "ALL" of the known world, and but was defeated by Rome. (did not mention when he died, the wording made it sound like he fought and lost against rome) *smashes head off desk* Highschool is definitely retarded. Never take what you learn there to be 100% fact... actually not even 50% fact!

[General Appo]

Hehe, yeah.

What I find amusing is that as soon as we pass 1000 AD 80% of everything we learn in history is about Sweden. Before then, like 5% is. It´s like "before the vikings there lived some people in Sweden who hunted deers and eat roots and couldn´t do jack shit".
Just.... argh! Why do everything before 1000AD have to be about the Romans and Greeks? Annoying.

[Hegix]

Until we reached 1658 in history class all we learned about was other peoples history. First Greeks and Romans then Swedes. Denmark was an evil warmongering nation in the south, but noone mentions that we were Danes.

I recently sat next to a group of teens discussing the new Arn movie (Swedish movie about a crusader that travels from Sweden to Jerusalem, becomes friends with Saladin, then travels back and defeats the Danes) when they talked about how "we" defeated the Danes in the end. I felt an urge to walk up to them and slap them for their ignorance.

As a side note, until I started playing EB I had no idea who the Epirotes were. I knew about Pyrrhus and his "victory", but always figured Epirus was an Italian city-state or something. I have the EB team to thank for firing up an interest in ancient history that I never really had before.

[General Appo]

Until we reached 1658 in history class all we learned about was other peoples history. First Greeks and Romans then Swedes. Denmark was an evil warmongering nation in the south, but noone mentions that we were Danes.

I recently sat next to a group of teens discussing the new Arn movie (Swedish movie about a crusader that travels from Sweden to Jerusalem, becomes friends with Saladin, then travels back and defeats the Danes) when they talked about how "we" defeated the Danes in the end. I felt an urge to walk up to them and slap them for their ignorance.

We noble Swedes would be Danes? How dare you?! Obviously we are The Superior Race, destined to rule the world with our blonde hair flying in the wind, our steelblue eyes seeing all and with a dozen of our legendary bimbos at our side.