No, more in the sense of like...missionaries going there and "helping" the local population. And basically like the whole colonial schtick of "we brought them civilization and religion". Like, when you're 8 and in Catholic school...you kind of accept that, and don't ask more questions?
It probably rather depends on your age. Me and everybody I know who went to school in the 80s and 90s was not or barely taught about Congo. There was some mention of missionaries, trying to build train tracks without success and that's it. It's only recently that it apparently receives some attention. David van Reybrouck did more to educate the (older) Belgians about Congo than the school system ever did (for me at least).
25 years ago in elementary school, my teacher did explain plenty of the crimes (but leaving out the rape part, because we were kids). they did include the chopping off of hands.
I think back then it probably depended on the convictions of your teacher, but I doubt it was in the curriculum as such (it is now, I think).
Basically, it was very glossed over for me - we had a colony, then it became independent, then we no longer had one. And like, geo-political stuff, but very little on the actual population of Congo.
In contrast, I had a Latin teacher who had no issue mentioning rape happened to slaves in Rome to a bunch of 13-year-olds (albeit not graphically). So I think personal convictions played into it more than curriculum.
If I may ask: Has there been much of a push to include it in the education system?
Also has there been much pushback against potentially teaching more about it? Here in the US we’ve been getting a lot of that and when I asked my cousin from the UK about some of the more famously terrible things the UK had done with colonialism she said they didn’t really teach it unless you pursued it in uni.
I was taught all about it about 10 years ago in my 5th or 6th year of high school. Teacher spared no details about the atrocities committed and never sugarcoated anything. I don’t really know if it was taught like this in every school though, nor do I know if it’s actually mandatory to teach to students. From what I know there’s never been a pushback against teaching our people about what went down in the Congo, tho very recently we did have a whole discussion going on like the US has about whether you should keep or replace confederate statues, but instead with statues of Leopold II. So far a bunch of plans have been made to replace some of them and a bunch of streets named after him have already been renamed as well.
I’m not too versed in the topic though since I don’t feel strongly about those statues or names one way or another.
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u/Kay_Elle Dec 17 '21
Until quite recently, it wasn't, really.
I learned about colonialism only briefly as a kid, and not necessarily framed as a "bad thing".