My friend in Singapore sent me a picture of a blank page in his history book

We were talking online about a protest that happened here in the US, and he said he'd never heard of it. He sent a photo of his old school textbook, and a whole section about a similar event in his country was just blacked out with marker. That was Tuesday morning. It hit me that his whole view of the world is shaped by what someone else decided he shouldn't see. I spent the next two days looking up what was under those marks, and it's stuff every citizen should know. It makes me wonder what we aren't being told here, just in quieter ways. Has anyone else had a friend from a different country show them something that was just... missing?

3 comments

3 Comments

martin.andrew16d ago

Got a cousin in another country who showed me something similar. It was a map in an old atlas. Whole borders were just different, like a chunk of land didn't exist anymore. Makes you question what we accept as fact here without a second thought. What specific event was blacked out in your friend's book? That detail matters.

abby_henderson16d ago

Totally get what you mean, @martin.andrew! When my friend's book had a section on a famous ship's maiden voyage blacked out, we just searched for old newspaper scans from other countries online. Found a whole different story about a delay that never made it into our history books.

stella_lane9416d ago

Wait, which ship was it? That's wild they could hide a whole delay.