Crash Course World History is a series of videos where John Green, a young adult fiction author and avid education vlogger, speeds through an insight of Islam and world history surrounding the Middle East. While the video is only thirteen minutes long, it is amazing what he can cram into one lesson. Hitting some of the most important points such as the five pillars of Islam, monotheism, alms giving, and explaining the differences between the Quran and the Hadith. John does an amazing job of explaining the highlights and important aspects of the religion and Middle Eastern culture surrounding Islam, but fails to comment on any current events in this piece. He has created, quite actually, an introductory level history lesson that will stand for years to come. There is only one thing that irks me about this video: the necessity of it being created.
John states in the very beginning that we as westerners are generally not knowledgeable about Islam and the Middle east because "we are taught that our history is the story of Christianity in Europe, when in fact our history is the story of people on the planet." This statement resonated with me, and while I have been studying Middle Eastern culture for a few months now in the CORE curriculum, it drew me in to view this lesson as if I had never heard of the Quran before. After learning about the Middle East and how the history of the region affects the rest of the world, I found it irritating that John was right. It's easy to understand how American History classes in middle school or high school drew strongly from European history, but what about World History? Maybe I'm wrong to say this, but I feel as if there was a lot of overlooked importance on the Middle East in my classrooms. Anyway, I'm glad to have seen this lesson, I just wish I had seen it before this semester so I didn't feel as if I was playing catch-up on some of the basics.
Crash Course World History: Islam
John states in the very beginning that we as westerners are generally not knowledgeable about Islam and the Middle east because "we are taught that our history is the story of Christianity in Europe, when in fact our history is the story of people on the planet." This statement resonated with me, and while I have been studying Middle Eastern culture for a few months now in the CORE curriculum, it drew me in to view this lesson as if I had never heard of the Quran before. After learning about the Middle East and how the history of the region affects the rest of the world, I found it irritating that John was right. It's easy to understand how American History classes in middle school or high school drew strongly from European history, but what about World History? Maybe I'm wrong to say this, but I feel as if there was a lot of overlooked importance on the Middle East in my classrooms. Anyway, I'm glad to have seen this lesson, I just wish I had seen it before this semester so I didn't feel as if I was playing catch-up on some of the basics.
Crash Course World History: Islam
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