Indian identity in American schools

[Asher]

Canada invented velcro.

Canada > Panini rolls > America.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Asher
They learn about that stuff in America -- at least I've learned about that stuff. Don't see your point...what are India's achievements they don't learn about?

I think your school may have been exception. Most schools hardly mention India and don't refer to all their mathematical advances.

[Cyclotron]

I had a class called "World Civilizations" my freshman year of high school, in which - among many other things - we studied ancient Indus Valley civilization. Granted, that's not really relevant to cultural knowledge of today's India, but it's something.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Cyclotron
I had a class called "World Civilizations" my freshman year of high school, in which - among many other things - we studied ancient Indus Valley civilization. Granted, that's not really relevant to cultural knowledge of today's India, but it's something.

I had a similar class my freshman year of high school called, absurdly, "History of the Non-Western World." IIRC, we spent 1/4 of the year on India, 1/4 on China, 1/4 on Russia, and 1/4 on the Middle East and Africa. It was a pretty dopey course, obviously, but certainly didn't offer any negative views of India or Hinduism; on the contrary, the message was that India was a great civilization, Hinduism was one of the world's great religions, and Indian independence was one of the 20th century's most important events. It might have gotten a little negative near the end of the unit, but I was in high school in the 70s -- not exactly India's finest hour.

[Cyclotron]

All of that was true of my course as well, save the "Russia" bit. I guess learning about Russia lost a bit of urgency after the Cold War ended.

[Dr Strangelove]

At my high school they basically saved History and Social Studies for the coaches to teach, because we had more teams than Phys Ed classes.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Mao
Hmmm... I'll be the first to admit that I don't think there's necessarily one huge monolithic movement that's totally and completely consistent in its views and such, so I'm sure some branches are very anti-white and anti-multicultural. I'm also a bit confused as to what you mean by "anti-mulitcultural" though?

Of course, you do have scholarly experience, and I think that's a significant part of the movement itself. That said, what experiences have you had "outside the scholarly"? Self-segregation? (there's already a standardized answer to this I'm ready spew out if you want ) the media? There's lots of things I guess, I'm just not particularly sure what you're talking about.

By anti-multicultiral, I mean against mixed race couples and non-asians engaging in asian customs or cultural activities.

My negative experiences come mostly from some asian-americans I met at Yale. More specifically, those who were concerned with race and attended these rallies I mentioned before. The worst experience I had was when a friend of mine was helping me move into a new apartment. She was korean-american. I had bought a futon from a friend of hers. As we were moving it, she told me that her friend wasn't going to sell it to me because I was white and that she only convinced him because we were friends. Well, you know how I feel about racists. I dropped the damn thing right there and told her I didn't want it. Then we got into a huge argument about how oppressed she is for being Korean. Her only personal example was that someone once confused her for Chinese and told her that her English was good. I'll admit, that wouldn't feel great, but it was nothing compared to what I experienced in China, which I laid on her. I also told her that I thought of her as just an American, which really pissed her off (there was no way I could win). So she followed up with the rally messages of white people stealing asian culture and such. She also told me how bothered she was that a mutual friend who was white was married to a black woman (Damn, there goes my chances with her, I thought ). Anyway, I gave her my anti-racist spiel, and we just left it at that continued to work. All this in front of my new apartment building. The doorman, who later became a good friend of mine, thought we were a couple.

Anyway, it was quite a shock for me because I was completely unaware of such radical movements before this. Although I began noticing it more with others there. Unfortunately, my scholarly knowledge of it is limited to the '60s, and I noticed nothing so vehement. Until that I knew many Asian people (no Indians, though) with whom the issue never came up.

As I asked, I am curious about it. I don't believe that the entire movement is that bad, but I've been reluctant to delve further. What are your comments of self-segregation and the such? I'd like to know more.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
In high school there was hardly anything about India in World History classes. American education is VERY Euro-centric, because, as pointed out that's what most teachers know. It's a vicious circle. Teachers only know about Europe, so they teach that and then future teachers end up only knowing about Europe, etc.

And yeah, nothing really negative about Hinduism at all.

Pretty much had the same experience.

It wasn't until I got to college and took elective history classes on non Euro classes that we learned about places outside of West.

Even "World History" is pretty much all about Euro history starting with Egypt, Greece, Roman Empire, Ted Striker Acension to Chief Hoebringer, etc.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


I had a similar class my freshman year of high school called, absurdly, "History of the Non-Western World." IIRC, we spent 1/4 of the year on India, 1/4 on China, 1/4 on Russia, and 1/4 on the Middle East and Africa. It was a pretty dopey course, obviously, but certainly didn't offer any negative views of India or Hinduism; on the contrary, the message was that India was a great civilization, Hinduism was one of the world's great religions, and Indian independence was one of the 20th century's most important events. It might have gotten a little negative near the end of the unit, but I was in high school in the 70s -- not exactly India's finest hour.

You and I went to high school at roughly the same time, and I too took a course of the same name in my sophomore year. Unfortunately whereas "Western Civ" (this course's opposite number) was a very carefully balanced stew of most of the arts hung on a frame of reasonably solid history, "Non-Western Civ" was a more or less random smorgasbord of unrelated cultural and religious details with no discernable structure. While I'd like to blame my hippy teacher for this (he was solely interested in Bhuddism), honestly there was very little support for him in the way of textbooks etc. Perhaps others got more out of this class than I did, I got an A but retained very little of the information despite some interest in the subject(s).

That said, generally like most here I find bias towards India to fall slightly on the favorable side of the equation here in the U.S. If anything in recent years India's popularity in the U.S. seems to have increased.

[Arrian]

I don't remember ever being taught anything negative about Hinduism/India

Yup. Same here. Very little about India at all. Some about Gandhi, which obviously is a positive.

-Arrian

[aneeshm]

The situation seems rather unbalanced , then . Over here in India , we learn quite a bit of European history , begginning from Rome and Greece and going on till modern times . And Europe is studied along with India - i.e. , whenever we learnt something about India , we would usually learn something about the Europe of the same time period , and how it affected us ( and even if it didn't , we'd still learn it ) .

[Ted Striker]

Sounds about right.

The only time that India is even remotely mentioned in our standard classes are:

1) Alexander the Great stopped short there. (This doesn't even count because they don't even go into enough detail about him reaching India).

2) The British colonization of India

[mitch]

Originally posted by aneeshm
The situation seems rather unbalanced , then . Over here in India , we learn quite a bit of European history , begginning from Rome and Greece and going on till modern times . And Europe is studied along with India - i.e. , whenever we learnt something about India , we would usually learn something about the Europe of the same time period , and how it affected us ( and even if it didn't , we'd still learn it ) .

I agree with your point here. The original article is a little off line though.

[Dinner]

In 8th grade we had a world history survey course which took a quarter to study East Asia, the Middle East (strangely India was included though hardly got mentioned other then the Mogul period, Alexander's invasion of Pakistan, and the British Raj), Africa, and pre-1492 Americas.

In college the middle east was covered as part of the history of Western Civilization with the mideast seen as part of western civ and as Europe originally being an offshot of the mideast. There was also a history course covering east Asian Civ but nothing on South Asian Civ.