Remember that important line between fantasy and reality?

[richardthinks]

Changing countries exposes you to different ways of thinking. Ayup.

So I'm checking through my son's homework (he's in the equivalent to 4th grade) and they're learning about the Gauls. Because it's French history and geography, and Gauls == French. And this is what they learn:

Gaul society was composed of Warriors, Druids, and Ordinary Men.
Warriors

Comments

[cdk]

I would probably be just as troubled by the depiction of Colonial and Revolutionary folks in a US school.

I grew up in Texas, so learning about indigenous peoples, from the Iroquois to the Maya, was a huge part of my elementary school education. At one point in 4th grade I was tasked with building a model of an Iroquois longhouse; other students built tipis and pueblos. And of course for every unit of U.S. History we had, we had to have a separate unit of Texas History. (I'm told that other states are not like this.) So we spent a LOT of time learning about Davy Crockett's body being found surrounded by 16 Mexican corpses.

[richardthinks]

Nice. So there are good Americans and bad Americans? Or maybe Mexicans aren't Americans?

[cdk]

I do my best to not use "Americans" because it's so confusingly ambiguous; in this case Crockett would be a United Statesian insurgent fomenting rebellion in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. But from the elementary school perspective, he was a Texan hero who fought for independence from the villainous Santa Anna.

The "surrounded by 16 Mexican corpses" thing is a quote attributed to a survivor of the battle at the Alamo who was challenging rumors that Crockett surrendered and was executed.

[whswhs]

I kind of like the Mexican Spanish adjective estadounidense. Too long for casual use in English, though. And "United Statesian" is potentially ambiguous; there have been other "United States," notably including Brazil for a long time.

Besides, if you say "American," people all over the world will take you to mean someone from the USA, just as if you say "doctor" anyone in American will assume you're talking about an MD and not a DDS, JD, or PhD.

[cdk]

That's two strikes against me, then - I specify "medical doctor" or "doctor of pharmacy" or "doctor of veterinary medicine" or "juris doctor" or what-have-you when I know.

This is actually the second time today I've been confronted with a need to discuss varying levels of ambiguity; yes, residents of other nations could reasonably be identified as "United Statesians"; however, no other nation presents such a pressing need. I don't anticipate that the ambiguity will ever be such that I am misunderstood. I do not find it to be confusingly ambiguous* in the way I find a bare "American."

* - it also strikes me as insultingly arrogant, but that's just a personal thing.

[richardthinks]

people the world over except for Brazilians, I can say from personal experience, who can get quite sniffy about the continental term being annexed by Usonians. On the other hand you can clarify for them immediately by adding "gringo."

[whswhs]

Funny, I remember hearing about Brazilians getting up in arms about "United Statesian" and the like because they were "the United States of Brazil."

[richardthinks]

I haven't heard that, but it wouldn't surprise me. Did you know that Brazil's land area is larger than that of the US minus Alaska? You will soon, if you hang out with Brazilians... The ones I know are very, very sanguine about the future of Brazil, as one of the BRIC nations, and rather less so about the US, master of the 20th century.

[richardthinks]

OK, I was fishing with the "American" thing because I was wondering how the Iroquois, Mayans and Mexicans are presented (and wondering also how the Texas curriculum might compare with curricula of other states with colonial histories, eg in India, Indonesia, where the safely dead ancient past might be glorified but the recent, contested past is often denigrated).

[cdk]

That's actually kind of hard, because indigenous peoples were presented as more "valid" and less "other" (and less "childlike barbarians who couldn't keep up with Ayn Rand enlightened Europeans") after I'd been in school for a while. So at the same time as they started introducing the more horrific elements of European settlement, they also started presenting the victims of that settlement more sympathetically. I mean, my elementary school education really was very "And they even had houses and a CALENDAR!"

I don't think it was until college that I was presented with the viewpoint that - just maybe - Mexico was actually the victim in the whole Texas thing. But definitely in elementary school in Dallas, Mexicans were the enemy from 1820 to 1850.