Crash Course World History

[Gen.Mannerheim]

So has anybody seen the Youtube show, Crash Course: World History? Its basically an English major doing a web series on History I guess intended for High School and Freshmen students. They claim its written by John Green's (the host) High School Teacher, not exactly reassuring imo, but 95% of what I've seen is stuff you could basically get off Wikipedia. The host also puts a huge amount of personal interpretation in the show and passes it off as fact or widely accepted academic ideas.

What are cfc's thoughts on the series?

 

[gozpel]

Well, the world is ON at this moment, maybe a link would help us to understand your point?

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Haha yea that might help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9

And since reading the op I do want to state that there are actually things I enjoy about the program. It is witty and they do an admirable job trying to make history engaging.

 

[JohannaK]

I watched it all and I'm gonna watch whatever comes after Literature. I liked it very much, but knowing so little history (certainly much less than I'd like) I can't really say if he's right or not. The episodes were well-paced and sufficiently short and spiced up.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

It's a weird one, I found myself disagreeing with him a lot on the things I already knew (like the skimming over of legitimate historiography with, essentially his personal opinion), but I watched them all with quite a bit of zeal, ended up thoroughly enjoying them and learnt a surprising amount from them. Given that I have a degree in History that may not necessarily be a good sign


Most honestly, I'm envious I'm not doing something like that with my time and internet access

 

[Core Imposter]

Before I click the link and waste my time, did he begin in the garden of Eden and explain that all of human history is an effort of reconciliation to God and Satan's efforts to prevent the individual from doing so?

 

[Peck of Arabia]

erm, not in so many words. Not really. Actually, just no.

He did dedicate an episode to the emergence of the Christianity though, which I found fascinating.

 

[Core Imposter]

erm, not in so many words. Not really. Actually, just no.

He did dedicate an episode to the emergence of the Christianity though, which I found fascinating.

This sounds like a lot of material.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

If it was too thorough and cumbersome, it wouldn't be "Crash Course", now would it?

 

[Core Imposter]

If it was too thorough and cumbersome, it wouldn't be "Crash Course", now would it?

Yeah but. To appeal to the intellectual level and attention span of the typical CFC liberal I was thinking a total runtime of 4 minutes 20 seconds to cover all of history would be about right. So it certainly shocked me that their are mulitiple episodes.

 

[JohannaK]

52 if I remember correctly. Or 42.

 

[History_Buff]

42. I enjoy the series, particularly the mongol clip that tends to play once an episode. I constantly find myself thinking "well that's not exactly what was happening, more detail!", but I suppose that's to be expected for an introductory level audience.

 

[Phrossack]

Before I click the link and waste my time, did he begin in the garden of Eden and explain that all of human history is an effort of reconciliation to God and Satan's efforts to prevent the individual from doing so?

Nonsense. Everyone knows the world was created by Tengri and Eje. In fact, he should have begun his history by saying this, since apparently he always says, "Except for the Mongols".

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

I think one of his problems is their self imposed restriction not to go over 12 minutes each episode. That is a horrible decision because 1, you have to leave out important info that your target audience, high schoolers and freshmen, need and 2, you will wind up saying theories and personal opinions that you can't properly explain thus miss informing people. Expanding the show to 15-20 would give a little more breathing room.

Also for all their hating of "Euro-centric World History" and using BCE &CE (which are some of the silliest things in modern history) the show is incredibly Euro-Centric. You can argue that they have too because of the structure of modern grade school education, but constantly bringing it up yet never actually changing it makes you look pretentious.

 

[JohannaK]

Indeed. Quite a few times episodes felt too short.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

It's a weird one, I found myself disagreeing with him a lot on the things I already knew (like the skimming over of legitimate historiography with, essentially his personal opinion), but I watched them all with quite a bit of zeal, ended up thoroughly enjoying them and learnt a surprising amount from them. Given that I have a degree in History that may not necessarily be a good sign


Most honestly, I'm envious I'm not doing something like that with my time and internet access

Vary close to my thoughts on the show. Every-time I heard him say, "Today I'm going to argue..." I started to cringe because you should never do that in an intro course. Also his final words in each episode were basically "Please use this 10 min video change your entire outlook on the world and the past!" Which you shouldn't make people do if you're not explaining all the facts.

Though all in all his episodes on Christianity and Islam were really good for his format, as well as those for the Crusades and the Chinese Revolution. On the flip side he really needed to keep to the facts in the American Revolution episode and to a lesser extent the French Revolution. His personal opinion on the Am Rev basically went against every primary resource from the time period throughout Europe.

 

[WindFish]

12 minutes each?

Hot damm, how do the CFC conservatives reactionaries deal with that?

 

[Lord of Elves]

Excellent from the perspective of teaching actual history to people who aren't well-versed in the field, but like several other posters have said, expresses too much of a veneer of non-bias and anti-Eurocentrism instead of substantial focus on legitimately important things that didn't happen in Europe or to Europeans, and also misses out on a lot of important things that did actually happen in Europe. Not everything that occurred in European history has to be mapped to a similar event elsewhere for us to feel we are being culturally sensitive or whatever.

Not a huge fan of how topics like African colonialism are covered inasmuch as I recall a tendency to telescope instead of focus on the actual cause and effect at the time. I'd have to review those episodes.

Still, very good and often clever.

 

[History_Buff]

Also for all their hating of "Euro-centric World History" and using BCE &CE (which are some of the silliest things in modern history) the show is incredibly Euro-Centric. You can argue that they have too because of the structure of modern grade school education, but constantly bringing it up yet never actually changing it makes you look pretentious.

Well, given that Europe basically ran the show for 100+ years, and his audience is probably mostly Europeans (and Euro-Americans) who will likely be most interested in European history, I don't know that that's such a bad thing.

There's probably more "hey look, stuff was happening in the rest of the world too" than I ever got in my formal education.

 

[Crezth]

Before I click the link and waste my time, did he begin in the garden of Eden and explain that all of human history is an effort of reconciliation to God and Satan's efforts to prevent the individual from doing so?

You are my favorite.