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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dioltach" data-source="post: 6198602" data-attributes="member: 21843">I'm English but grew up in the Netherlands. The American Revolution was taught very simply: "No taxation without representation", the Boston Tea Party, not much else. Nothing was said about the British perspective. That said, a lot of the history we were taught was like that. With the French Revolution the focus was entirely on the economic differences before the revolution; if the Terror was mentioned at all, it was just that one word without any explanation.A lot was made of Dutch achievements: the great sea battles that they won against the Spanish and the British (nothing about Camperdown, though), their revolt against the Spanish, their great explorers and colonies (but nothing about the police actions in Indonesia). Slavery was only mentioned in the context of other countries' history.The only subjects we studied in any depth were the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Communism and the Russian Revolution. Five years in a row, despite the fact that this was the late 1980s and early 1990s and Communism in Europe was visibly failing at the time. Sure it was an important factor in world history, but there were other things too, most of which were just ignored. (I'm sorry, when I look back on my time at school I can get very angry about limited the education was and how much more I could have learned, or had to find out by myself.)</blockquote>