Look beyond what they show

During the last few weeks I have learnt more about Geography than ever in my whole life. The map´s presentations turned out being a fantastic activity for me, specially because I was not only listening to the pieces of information my classmates were giving to us, but also because there was a lot of interesting information in their maps. I thought it was a very original and entertaining way of learning.
One of the things that caught my attention was the language each of them (us) had to use to avoid stereotypes when talking about countries like the US ( whose culture we think we know only for what we see on television or movies) and New Zealand, a country whose culture, until that moment, was practically unknown to me. 
There were some things during the Geography's Unit that specially liked me and so I searched for information about them. 
One of them was the Commonwealth of Nations. My classmate talked about many positive things about it, like cooperation, integrity between countries, etc. But I guessed that not everything is as pretty as they showed. So basically I discovered that the Commonwealth is also a way to keep the countries under the control of the United Kingdom. Money and power, that is what they want.
Another interesting thing was that in Canada people speak two languages, French and English, but people from french-speaking locations don't feel very comfortable with being called bilingual, they feel their cultures is being attacked by the english-speaking culture.

What is your opinion about this?
Do you consider important these topics?
What would you feel if you knew your culture is being constantly attacked or controlled?