Friday, January 15, 2010
A Selective History
I recently finished a book called "The Historian," by Elizabeth Kostova. It is about the legend of Dracula, but it deals a lot with Eastern European history, particularly the histories of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. This made me realize that before reading this book, I basically had no knowledge of these countries, all I knew was that they existed, which isn't really saying a whole lot. And this made me wonder why I didn't know about their histories and many other country's histories. Why do I know nothing about the history of Argentina, the Ukraine, or New Zealand? Why is my only knowledge of Scottish history coming from a scraggly Mel Gibson in "Braveheart"? I guess my ultimate question is why do some histories seem more important than others? I studied the Ancient Greeks and Romans from 6th grade to freshman year. But before freshman year I had no previous knowledge of the Middle East or Chinese history. Why is it okay for 6th graders to learn about Ancient Greece, but not about Islam? I realize that elementary school has to create a foundation of knowledge for its students, but it troubles me that before high school I only knew a lot about the same three countries: America, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. But who makes these decisions? Who decides what history is important, and what history is not important? And most importantly, WHY?
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That's a good question. When I was younger, the only histories I can remember learning about were of Japan, Sumer/Babylon/etc, Ancient Rome, Egypt, and Greece. I thought it was really confusing, because the type of stuff focused on was kind of whimsy-seeming. They were interesting to learn about, but I think learning about them the way we did (as isolated, romanticized blocks in history, when things were like x and y, without any connection to the future) made them seem fictional.
ReplyDeleteOne of my biggest problems with history was chronology. Not 'when absolutely everything happened,' but chronology in the sense that I didn't know what the time periods were about in relation to each other. I got a sense of how "different" they were (in Japan, they bow, and in Egypt, they really like gold and cats), but not how they fit in to history as a whole. I learned about Babylon/Sumer/other really old civilizations in 6th grade and the entire time I was like, "Well, I know which civilization invented what, but who are these people, where are they, what other civilizations came before/after them, and what happened to them?" Learning that they were from #### BCE was unhelpful. We learn about some good stories about events, culture, and so on, which to some degree are good to know (how much can little kids handle anything more complex?) but it didn't really make sense. (No wonder so many kids asked, 'What's the point of learning about something that happened so long ago?')
I think the idea of what history we learn is an important lense through which we see history, just like the essay question for the final. I remember in first grade, our teacher, who was swedish, decided that we were going to learn about sweden. So we spent a week learning about Sweden and its culture. Also, during dinner today my dad was talking about how geology was a really important class at his high school in maryland, because the president of the school was a geologist. So it seems to me that the people who decide what history we learn make their decisions based on what they are interested in. I don't know if this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that topic selection, especially at a younger age, is more based what the teacher wants to teach, because there isn't a very strict curriculum until you get older.
ReplyDeleteThere are some "very important" historical events that pretty much any history course covers, but the rest is entirely up to the teacher. Different history teachers emphasize the study of certain historical themes and events based on their personal beliefs. If there is a hardcore leftist teacher, he/she probably doesn't want to spend too much time studying Lincoln. There is no "right or wrong" here - certain history is important to some but unimportant to others. And when a teacher is given somewhat of a choice as to what should be highly emphasized in the course, he/she is obviously not going to choose those events that are "unimportant" to him/her.
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