My professor mentioned the 1980 Gwangju Uprising was barely covered in our textbook, just one paragraph. He said it's a huge deal in Korea but gets skipped over here.

3 comments

3 Comments

Wow, that's a good point. I used to just assume our history books covered the big stuff, you know? But then I saw how they spent a whole chapter on the Cold War but barely a page on stuff the US did in South America. Makes you wonder what else gets left out because it's not a simple story.

thompson.robin1mo ago

Man, my buddy took a Korean history class in college. His professor showed them a Korean textbook next to the one they were using. The Korean book had a whole section with photos about Gwangju. Their US book just had a single, vague line about "civil unrest." He said it felt like reading about two completely different countries. Really shows you what gets left on the cutting room floor.

shanewells2mo ago

Sounds about right for US textbooks. They'll give you ten pages on the Boston Tea Party but a single paragraph on a major modern democracy movement. Guess it depends on whose history is more convenient to tell.