Education
Education is told to be a privilege, something that will give us the facts and guide us through the world. But what happens when these facts end up being a twisted version of the truth?
In the real world, perspective is everything. Every person has a different version of the world, but the key to growing up is acknowledging and immersing yourself in everything around you.
Told that ignorance is bliss, a poem that our English class read on the first day of school highlights this moral, which often does not have favorable outcomes.
“Trying to protect his student’s innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters."
Our education is how we connect with the world, but when we are consistently fed an alternate version of the truth, consequences persevere, as this poem emphasizes.
For decades, we have been taught a so-called “truth” in our history class. But when you look further, our textbooks only contain a few pieces of the immense puzzle that we call history.
When learning about how Colombus sailed the ocean blue, we forget about how the millions of Native Americans were cast aside. When learning about the beauty of Hawaii, we forget about the violent overtaking of a peaceful native land. When learning about the teddy bear being named after Teddy Roosevelt, we forget that he sent troops to commit genocide in the Philippines.
Behind stories of the triumph of democracy and the endless “blessings”, we have bestowed upon the world is a forgotten story of those who cannot speak, cast aside in history. To take a new, diverse, and true perspective history, we need to take a step back and notice what’s hidden between the pages, and what never made it in the book.
Hi Parvathi :) I really like your input in the last part of this post where you mention what is hidden between the pages. I connect with this sentiment because I love learning about big historical events but hate reading it in textbook format. Maybe you agree with me when I say that personal anecdotes from each event matter more than the stats and historian's analysis. (though those can be important too).
ReplyDeleteParvathi this is a really interesting concept. I have thought about this a lot myself. I once had a teacher that was very blunt about acknowledging history in it's good bad and indifferent. She would emphasize the importance of not sugarcoating it or only keeping in the good parts. It was she that taught me how important not skipping the lines in-between the lines is. What makes a good story is a little drama and conflict sometimes. However, this may not always be the case when applied in the context of the world, which is exactly why we have to teach history accurately - to learn from it. There is no other point besides that. Good history teaches us what works, and bad history is even more important, because it teaches what never to do again.
ReplyDeleteYour relation to this poem with historical events is really interesting. Often times, people are so involved with their own endeavors that they are ignorant to the people around them. Since Columbus was so focused on the fact that he discovered the Americas, he was ignorant towards the native people there. Most of the times, these atrocities are hidden from us and we only remember the good parts of history.
ReplyDeleteI’ve once heard that in Japan, most of the students never learn about Japan’s role in World War II. When I heard this, I thought, It must be because of some kind of lack of virtues that America values. But with your application of an outsider perspective, it becomes clear that every country seems to cover up dark truths. This new awareness causes me to wonder, what is the extent of our oblivion?
ReplyDeleteI found your post very interesting. I like how you discuss how we only know the history we are taught. It really makes you think about how other countries learn a different version of historic events, and what they know about how events occurred could be totally different form what we are taught in class.
ReplyDeleteParvathi, this post as a whole was beautifully written. My favorite line was "behind the stories...those who cannot speak." I completely agree with your sentiment on how we need to take a step back from history books - after all, who writes them? I think that as a society overall, we need to realize the biases of the history recorders - how the actual record can be shaped to dishonestly reflect the overall truth.
ReplyDeleteWow Parvathi! I found your post to be very unique! I agree with you that perspectives make a big difference because when I had analyzed the same poem, I had thought a type of way about the poem. But now after reading about your perspective on the poem, it really brought me a new insight I never thought of. As I was reading your blog, the few lines in your blog post that piqued my interest the most was when you said " When we learned about how Columbus....in the Philippines". It had never occurred to me about the things we overlook and forget about and much of a big role in history it plays.
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