Hacker News Reader

Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

The American and French Revolutions are a pretty big deal on the road to modern democracy, as well as being tied to 1700s Enlightenment ideals. Everyone educated should know this.

View on HN

Of course, they are important, but so are many other things - and speaking e.g. from a European POV, a lot of other events are simply much more salient and commonplace - and the same is probably even more true for other continents (would a random reasonably educated American or European person know when the Meiji restauration happened or when Latin America became independent?). You can't expect everyone to have memorised all the important dates.

America was a backwater at the time and therefore the best place to experiment with European enlightenment ideals. Which it did, and was a direct factor in the French Revolution. I also learned about numerous revolutions in Latin America from Mexico to Bolivar to San Martin over the early 1800s.

The events that directly affect the modern world should be covered in school. I’d say revolutions that created large modern states would be among them.

Of course, we learn about the American Revolution in schools, but people aren't going to remember every date they were taught in schools. The founding of Rome or the Punic Wars are also hugely important for today's world, but not everyone can place them.

The reason most US Americans probably can place the American Revolution is because I assume it's so often commememorated there. In Germany, people would be much more likely to remember the years 1933, 1949 and 1989, because of how often they're referenced.

> I’d say revolutions that created large modern states would be among them.

The Russian revolution as well. And the Chinese one. It’s quite difficult to make sense of the late 20th century (yes, I know) without them. Or the early 21th.

Agreed, and it doesn't mean memorizing a date as folks here keep mentioning. The nearest decade is fine in most cases.

Indeed. The order of things (what influenced what, and what directly caused what) is much more important than the accurate date

do you remember the decade of the Treaty of Westfalia? Because if you live in central Europe, that's at least as important as the American Revolution.

I slightly misspoke above. The important part in my opinion is the milestone of democracy. That it happened nearby wars is somewhat incidental and common.

What I mostly remember about the HRE is that it wasn’t Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. :D. My first guess of mid 1600s is not too far off.

(Westphalian sovereignty is interesting… reading about it now.)

Those governments have been replaced multiple times over the centuries however, so achievements at the time were not stable.

> Those governments have been replaced multiple times over the centuries however, so achievements at the time were not stable.

The Peace of Westfalia signalled the end of major religious strife within Christianity and laid the foundation for today's modern conception of a nation-state. In my opinion, this is at least as important as the American Revolution.

A pretty big deal in America. I don't think knowledge of the exact date of the American Revolution is a requirement for education outside America. At least no more than "17something...ish".

"17something...ish" is enough to answer (or at least make a high confidence guess at) the original question (was the American Revolution contemporary with the enlightenment?)

For that matter, a lot of historical dates we consider important are only important to us because A) we're westerners and B) we got them drilled into us by textbooks and classes.

The remaining majority of the world (the west is a minority) sincerely couldn't care less about the American or French or Industrial Revolutions or Columbus (re)discovering America or the Hundred Years War or the Black Death or the Fall of Rome or whatever else.

Kind of like how we as westerners generally couldn't care less about Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, or Polynesian histories.

The culture we grow up in and become indoctrinated by determines what is important and what is not.

And just so we're clear, this bit of ignorance is perfectly fine: Life is short, ain't nobody got time for shit that happened to people you don't even know who lived somewhere you will never see.

Appeal to ignorance and anti-intellectualism, congrats.

Let me put it this way: Can you really blame someone for not knowing a historical fact that is completely irrelevant to their life, especially when they probably have more pressing concerns to learn and care about?

We only have so many hours in a day and so many days in a lifetime, while knowledge is practically infinite.

You could say that about anything.

I limited my initial statement to educated folks, and presumably those who would like to be one.

/history/democracy/milestones -> relatively important.

As very broad subjects? Yes. But any particular factoid about them is practically irrelevant for most people who don't actually have anything to do with that factoid.

Hell, I would even go as far as to say the American Revolution is irrelevant even for most Americans because it has nothing of practical value. We (Americans) all know about it to varying degrees, but again that is due to growing up and being indoctrinated in it.

"Nothing is important to know besides my lunch time..." yawn

This is such a boring dismissal of a very interesting subject - what information is important to whom and why.

A pretty important reason for learning about the history of democracy is to learn how and why to preserve it.

This is the most boring knuckledragging subthread I’ve ever read here. Arguing we shouldn’t bother knowing anything but what’s underneath our nose, without qualifications. Not even a theoretically useful philosophy, such as solipsism is being espoused here.

All the while masquerading as intelligent conversation. It’s only interesting until you follow it to its conclusion. Anti-intellectualism in a nutshell, and you should be embarrassed to be seen in the vicinity. :D

Is it nice to learn about the American or French Revolutions? Absolutely. But time is a limited resource and must be rationed according to each individual's needs.

Most people are far too busy living lives to have time to spare spelunking into tomes; they usually don't even understand what democracy actually is either, but they get by fine in life just the same.

The reality is no man can learn all there is to know, it's physically impossible and lines in the sand must be drawn. Given that, which side of the line a certain historical factoid lies will vary; some will consider the American Revolution important and some will not, and some will be indoctrinated by their society, all are fine.

Also, I'm going to cite the HN Guidelines here for your reference going forwards:

>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Absolute rubbish. There are plenty of facts that it would be quite surprising for an educated person not to know. The date of the American Revolution is not one of those facts, except for Americans.

Just like it would be unusual for an educated person not to know when the Battle of Hastings was... unless they aren't British.

And that's about as close a country to America as you can get. Do you think the educated in Singapore or Kenya learn about the American Revolution? Hell even in the UK we did not spent a single history lesson on it. I'm not exaggerating.

It’s not entirely surprising your country would prefer to forget that war. Disappointing perhaps but not surprising.

In my opinion, a battle is generally not important compared to a milestone of democracy. I learned about the Magna Carta in 1215 and saw a copy once and appreciate that knowledge.

But sure, keep arguing for ignorance and dismissing education if you’d like—we’ll enjoy the show here in posterity.

> It’s not entirely surprising your country would prefer to forget that war. Disappointing perhaps but not surprising.

Maybe not, but that's hardly the only thing from history that we didn't learn about. I think you're massively underestimating how much history there is. Most of the world has millennia of history. It's not like America where you can cover the entire history of the country.

Also history is an optional lesson past age ~14. You can choose to do Geography instead. But I'm not going to call you uneducated for not knowing what a medial moraine is.

> Most of the world has millennia of history.

And I also feel that it's myopic to think that a historical event is less significant because it happened longer ago and its effects are more diluted. But there are plenty of turning points in history that explain why today's world looks the way it does, the American (or French) revolutions are but some of them.

Yes, those things cannot be blamed

Your problem is that, instead of encouraging people to learn, you're just dismissing people who don't know one very specific historical fact as "uneducated". People in Europe generally know that America is a democracy and many probably also know that it was the first modern one, but to an average European it doesn't matter that much that it happened in the 1770s as opposed to, say, the 1650s.

If you didn’t know it, why not learn it now? Here’s your opportunity, one of today’s 10k.

Arguing you shouldn’t need to learn it isn’t impressive in any shape or form. It’s middle-brow level (non)curiosity, and less than welcome here.

Never said one shouldn't learn new things. Just that it's unreasonable to expect that "every educated person knows X" - because time is finite.

No one that I know of in Europe gets taught this

Swede here. Both the American an the French revolution were taught when I went to school in the ninth and tenth decades of the twentieth century. As GP points out, they're both fairly significant events that had side effects relevant even to us up here.

I would be extremely surprised if Sweden was unique among European nations in this regard.

Why not learn it anyway. Broader 'bildung' is a lifelong pursuit.

I’m from working class England and that’s absolutely not the culture for us. Education is considered superfluous unless it makes you money

Right, and I'm from a (partly) academic family. I guess it's a culture/class thing too.

I grew up in Scotland. We studied American History in school. In fact we didn't study English History, except as it pertained to Scottish History, so to this day I'm hazy on Magna Carta, turbulent priests and so on.

I’m glad to be proven wrong. I’m English btw. We learnt nothing about America but we learnt everything about King Henry VIII

Reply on news.ycombinator.com