#9: This Is Why We Should Teach Chinese History in Schools

The Bad Chinese Teacher Podcast

On air December 9th, 2019. Recorded November 26th, 2019.

By the time you hear this episode, Patricia will likely be in a stress-induced coma due to having just returned from chaperoning a four-day Model Congress conference with 35 of her students. (Listen to Part 1 of the Model Congress special episode for further context.)

Fortunately, Patricia also had the foresight to record this week's episode two days before leaving for that conference. Unfortunately, Patricia is also bad at conjuring up content ideas under pressure. Hence, this week's episode consists of Patricia reading out loud and giving a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on a paper she wrote as a college student five years ago. (This is not a joke.)

The paper -- which you will hopefully find more compelling than Patricia's woeful lack of creative ideas -- explores how the modern American imagination of China is shaped by coverage of Chinese history in high school history classes. Spoiler: American high school history classes don't typically cover China, but they sure do cover a lot of America.

How then, do American history textbooks cover the history of US-China relations -- and if students are taught a perspective on American history that portrays the United States as, in the words of Frances Fitzgerald, "a young Siegfried...magically strong, and innocent of the burdens of history, yet at the same time an orphan, surrounded by potential enemies in an unrecognizable world," how then, in the absence of any explicit instruction on Chinese history, does this perspective inform their perspective on China as a state?

And, in this absence of any explicit instruction on Chinese history, what responsibility do Chinese language classrooms in the United States have in educating students about China? Should this affect how language teachers approach culture studies in the world language classroom?

If you're a current or former American high school student who's ever wondered why you never learned about non-Western history in school, this episode is for you.

Show notes for this episode can be found at badchineseteacher.com.

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