Most americans don't know about our country's history. Why does this have to lead to the erasure of the rest of the world's history?

When the topic of american history comes up, it's not uncommon for people to lament, "Why does this have to be so hard to teach/learn?" The lamentation then turns into, "Well, we just need to make it more simple and accessible" (and I agree, if you're going to teach high school history, you should start with american history, because that's most relevant to american students), and then turns into, "Fuck it, let's just simplify it by erasing everything else entirely". We have classes that are literally called "world history" which don't include a *singl*e lesson on China, Japan, the Koreas, or India, and hardly a mention of South America or Africa. A whole lesson on Canada and Mexico? Forget about it. We spend a whole month on the american civil war and the history of the usa, but maybe a day or two on Canada and Mexico? As if Canada and Mexico don't exist. And then people wonder why so many americans don't know jack shit about the rest of the world.<br><br>Then there are the people who think all of american history should be scrapped, and we should be taught the history of other countries. This is the other extreme, where we should go from one extreme to another. If we're going to teach world history, we should at least cover the basics of the world (like a map); we should especially teach about the history of countries we have treaties with, like Canada and Mexico, as if our relationship with these countries is more important than the history of our own country. <br><br>I get that american history can be hard. It's really fucking hard, especially when you consider we have a country with a highly divided history (the usa has been deeply divided since its *founding*). But the solution is not to just erase the rest of the world's history, or to only teach an extremely narrow and limited version of that history. The solution is to be critical of the way we teach and learn history, both here and abroad.