Quote from Ceye Sni Yo on 08/03/10 at 17:56:33:I've been thinking about a comment made by Eric some time ago. In short it was to the point that we need to worry about the issues of today and not worry about the past (History)
I came up with this and I hope that my words will relate correctly my feelings on the subject.
History is the past and we live in the today. But it is the history, individual, cultural, ritual, spiritual and community that formed who we are today. By the events both good and bad we learned, we suffered and we formed thoughts about what happened, why it happened and how it effected us. From the forced schools, the formation of reservations, the creation stories, everything that happened to our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers. These things are remembered, passed on in oral tradition and now on pages of some book. Some of these stories are real events, some were stories told to cause one's to reflect and form their own thoughts. But they formed who we became. Just as the actions we are taking today will be told and taught to our children, grandchildren and great grand children.To understand who we are, we must understand what those before us experienced. This is true regardless of Race, religion, color of skin or culture. Without our history (past) there is no today, we would be a blank slate without form or thought. History made us and we must preserve that history and pass it along as it was passed along to us. We owe that to those that will come after us.
How we relate that history to our young people will form what we will become as a people in the generations to come.
These are my thoughts, I hope that I have written the words without offense to anyone, Yes that includes you Eric. It continues to cause me to think about the subject and with great interest I seek out my personal history to better understand myself.
This reminds me of something I've been reading lately. I picked up a book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen. A lot of the book talks about how and why the way "History" is taught in public schools is....how do I put this?......Well, it's incomplete at best, and completely false at it's worst. It made me think about many things. I was never interested in the past while I was in public school, because it was very boring. Endless lists of dates and names of people who died hundreds of years ago. Also something in my heart told me that these "history classes" were leaving things out. 25 years later, I find a book by a college history professor who says "Yes Matt, there WERE things they weren't telling you. Things that would've upset the people in charge, things that would've made you angry if you knew what had happened, what your ancestors had done to others, but worse yet, they left out things that would've made you think and question, and that's not what schools want young people to do....at least not until you goto college and are paying people to make you think and question." Mr. Loewen says that the history books are not written to teach the young people about the past, they are written only to sell textbooks. That is, they are written to please the people who decide what books the schools will buy. So the stories are bland, one-sided, and told in a way that suggests there is no question about them (and there are many questions), no debate (and many debates are still on-going), and no dissention. Worse yet, new discoveries that shed light on the past are no included in the textbooks so as not to upset the Textbook Adoption Committee members.
So in public schools, millions of young people are told stories about the past, that inform the way they think and see the world, that aren't ment to teach them about what happened, but are ment only to be pleasing to those who decide what books to buy. I never knew that Egypt was trading with South America mor than 5,000 years ago. No one ever taught me that in school. The more I read Mr. Loewen's book, the more I think "What else was I never told as a child? What are teachers not telling children now? How will that affect how they see the world and relate to others?"
If the teachers and the textbooks only tell stories about the great accomplishments of White People, that omission suggests that only Whites are important to the student. For a white student, that might make them feel important, but it also might make them think only people like themselves are important. For non-white students they see no stories of people like themselves which might inspire them and give them confidence. Even the term "White People" is a fiction created by how history is taught, according to Mr. Loewen. Before coming to the Americas, the pale-skinned peoples of Europe thought of themselves not as "White"....but as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian, and so on.
There is so much I was never told growing up, I feel like I'm always having to play Catch-Up as an adult. And it's much harder now as I have bad habits to over-come that were never there when I was a child. I'm learning that many things I was told growing up are incorrect. I'm learning that many of those incorrect things I was told, have been known to be incorrect for 50 years or more by the very people who teach the classes and write the textbooks....and they knowingly witheld that information in order to sell their textbooks and make a profit.
I'm really annoyed with my public school history teachers and the people who wrote the textbooks we were forced to read in class.
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history lesson (Read 691 times)
