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Jan. 6th, 2011 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bobcatmoranWhen I was in eighth grade, the social studies class was "World Geography," taught by Mr. K, who had been there long enough to have taught the same course to my English teacher back when she was a student in the same school district. Unlike the other middle school classes, Mr. K's class was all lecture, delivered at high volume and punctuated by him whacking a yardstick on the chalkboard or one his numerous hanging maps (you could hear him in the adjoining English classroom quite clearly). He'd talk to us about the Amazon rainforest, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the legacy of colonialism in Africa, etc., and we'd take notes. Then, there would be a test at the end of the unit. It was very much like a high school or college-level course in many respects, and we all hated it at the time. In retrospect, I am grateful that he did so, since it taught me how to take good notes.
Anyway, the course went along with the textbook up until the end of the Western Europe unit. See, our textbooks literally dated from 1985, and the next chapter was "Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc." This was a problem, as the Soviet Union had ceased to exist some four years previously, the map of Eastern Europe in our textbooks bore no resemblance to the current borders, and basically all the information in that chapter was now horribly outdated. Mr. K wasn't even able to obtain any up-to-date maps of the area — former Yugoslavia in particular was sort of a mess at this point. So his solution was to completely ignore what was currently happening on the ground and replace the "Soviet Bloc" unit with one on Imperial Russian history. Yeah, that's right. Rather than learning about the Velvet Revolution, the (then) ongoing Bosnian war, or Gorbachev, we learned about Peter the Great, the Time of Troubles, and Why You Do Not Try To Invade Russia In The Winter. By the end of it, I could name all the Tsars in order, starting with the Rurik dynasty.
Don't get me wrong, it was pretty awesome, although I suspect a lot of his stories weren't strictly historically accurate (he also hinted at some of the more salacious rumors about Catherine the Great which…um…yeah). I've never learned most of that stuff anywhere else, even in my AP European history class, and Russian history is full of "you couldn't make this stuff up" moments (my personal favorite is when there was not one, not two, but three guys in succession, all falsely claiming to be Dmitri, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible and heir to the throne). But I still regret that there was this huge geopolitical change that happened in my lifetime, and I know very little about it.
I decided to do something about it, finally, and true to form went to the local library. Unfortunately, their selection of books on Eastern Europe are travel guides, WWII histories, travel guides, WWII histories, WWII histories, and books about Tsarist Russia. Oh, and some more books about WWII. Sigh. Oh, well, at least this Catherine the Great biography looks interesting.
Anyway, the course went along with the textbook up until the end of the Western Europe unit. See, our textbooks literally dated from 1985, and the next chapter was "Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc." This was a problem, as the Soviet Union had ceased to exist some four years previously, the map of Eastern Europe in our textbooks bore no resemblance to the current borders, and basically all the information in that chapter was now horribly outdated. Mr. K wasn't even able to obtain any up-to-date maps of the area — former Yugoslavia in particular was sort of a mess at this point. So his solution was to completely ignore what was currently happening on the ground and replace the "Soviet Bloc" unit with one on Imperial Russian history. Yeah, that's right. Rather than learning about the Velvet Revolution, the (then) ongoing Bosnian war, or Gorbachev, we learned about Peter the Great, the Time of Troubles, and Why You Do Not Try To Invade Russia In The Winter. By the end of it, I could name all the Tsars in order, starting with the Rurik dynasty.
Don't get me wrong, it was pretty awesome, although I suspect a lot of his stories weren't strictly historically accurate (he also hinted at some of the more salacious rumors about Catherine the Great which…um…yeah). I've never learned most of that stuff anywhere else, even in my AP European history class, and Russian history is full of "you couldn't make this stuff up" moments (my personal favorite is when there was not one, not two, but three guys in succession, all falsely claiming to be Dmitri, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible and heir to the throne). But I still regret that there was this huge geopolitical change that happened in my lifetime, and I know very little about it.
I decided to do something about it, finally, and true to form went to the local library. Unfortunately, their selection of books on Eastern Europe are travel guides, WWII histories, travel guides, WWII histories, WWII histories, and books about Tsarist Russia. Oh, and some more books about WWII. Sigh. Oh, well, at least this Catherine the Great biography looks interesting.
