This morning my husband's radio went off so then he could get ready for work. The lawn mower was going past our window of our apartment, so it took us a few minutes to become aware of the two men on my husband's talk radio channel. I was aroused just enough to hear something about history and my dreamy mind thought of my high school history classes. I loved my high school and the teachers there. English, history, and art were my favorite classes by leaps and bounds.
But as my sleepy mind worked through groggy memories the thought of "we never get past World War II" came into my head. And it was true. From the time I remember really learning about history in the fourth grade when we learned in depth about Utah history and how we Mormon's came to settle here (which is well and good for a fourth grader) to my last few days in my AP history classes, we could never get past WWII. I know of the Korean war because of M*A*S*H* and the Vietnam War because of Operation Dumbo Drop (both awesome shows that everyone should watch) I have never learned anything about Nixon or Reagan or even the presidency of JFK except for the hearsay of "Watergate, blah blah, blah," "Actor, blah blah blah," "Assassination and brother's death, blah blah blah." Unless we did some random Wikipedia searching or students actually went to their public library, we learned nothing of the Cold War or the African revolts. Honestly, I still have no idea what the first Gulf War was about. I don't know what made Reagan such a great president, except for I think that he was the one who told Putin to "tear down this wall". I don't know anything about any of the other Presidents that we have had in my parent's lifetime, who's actions as President, as well as those in the cabinets, are a reason why we have problems today. (Recent Presidencies and policies are not out of that reasoning as well.)
If I, who is a history buff, don't know these things, what about those who hate history classes and think it's boring? Is that do to the fact that we learned the same history lessons every time we had a new history class? We learned of the Pilgrims (maybe), Battle of Concord and Lexington, Battle of Bunker Hill, the Alamo (big maybe), a gold rush and brief movements of peoples across country, Gettysburg and every single move they made while at that farm (Chamberlain was awesome, but we spent more days discussing it than the actual battle), Archduke Franz Ferdinand being the match that started WWI, the battles of Western front of WWII (but nothing of the Pacific Theater except for Hiroshima and Iwo Jima). Then when we reach the Paris Peace Conference and maybe a little into the Cold War (no later than 1950 though, we don't want to push it) is when finals would hit and we would miss the last fifty years our history. Every single year.
We are forced to take these history classes and maybe memorize the Presidents of the U.S., but we learn nothing new. We block our U.S. History classes into the years 1775-ish to 1950. Even into college, when our required courses says we have to take History of the U.S. again! (for the tenth time) we never got past that point. We spend so much time being fed lecture after lecture with baby
spoons and don't touch potentially hot topics that are more recent. We kept slavery to plantations. I don't ever recall talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. in any of my history classes (now this may be vastly different in other parts of the country where the is a much higher African American population; Utah's is very small in that regard so it doesn't get touched often). The only mention of hippies or the War on Drugs is from my parents who lived during that time.
spoons and don't touch potentially hot topics that are more recent. We kept slavery to plantations. I don't ever recall talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. in any of my history classes (now this may be vastly different in other parts of the country where the is a much higher African American population; Utah's is very small in that regard so it doesn't get touched often). The only mention of hippies or the War on Drugs is from my parents who lived during that time.
Why couldn't we get past the Battle of the Bulge?
I understand that politics are hard to teach and keep the high school students, who are already sleeping, attentive and receptive. I know I hated my Government and Citizenship class my Senior year of high school. I didn't like it because we were learning the branches of government again, something we learned almost every year in all of our history classes. The other topics our teacher chose were the same one's we would have in our next class period (U.S. history). She did have us get news articles that we were to discuss in class, but no one really knew what was going on or why it was happening. No one knew the background to the circumstances of which we were living. And what high school student is going to look dumb by asking?
The teachers, is seems, are forced to still teach to the test. For AP classes, that's all it was. Know Voltaire to Nietzsche to Marx and to have us come to our own conclusions about the text. He gave us histories and maps and didn't focus on every single battle of the French Revolution. We had a lot of context to cover, but we saw how the world moved. I came to finally understand why Spain isn't the powerhouse it once was and how England came to be so.these pieces of art, know this person, know the reasons for this battle 300 years ago in France. Why do we need to know it? It's on the test. While I learned a lot from my AP European History teacher (because we weren't taught these things in any other class), he was still teaching to the test. Though, he taught us as if we were college students. He gave us primary sources to read from
That AP Euro class has become one of my favorites. However, I wish we would have talked about Eastern Europe. In college, I took a Europe: 19 Century class. My professor had an emphasis in her degree on the French Revolution. She wanted to spend a lot of time there. We spent three weeks guillotines and bloody messes.. We only have three and a half months on everything in Europe during the 1800's. I was sorely disappointed in that class. There were so many Eastern European countries who barely got fifteen minutes in the entire three and a half months. Those countries and their histories were the reason I took the class and the questions I did have she didn't have answers for and didn't direct me to a proper source. She also spent more time with us, the students, teaching the class when we had no idea what we were doing.
I ended up learning more about Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia (the little countries between Poland and Russia) by reading Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys, who got most of her research from her family who was there, than any of my history classes taught. In class, we never talked about the Soviets taking over countries and what they did to the people. These people froze up in Siberia and were carted around in railway cars like the Germans did the Jews. Maybe it was mentioned that x-million people died in Russia by their own government, but we never learned why or how.
It was only through my Chinese History class in college that I learned about the Rape of Nanking what the Japanese did during WWII to the Chinese. How it was a holocaust in three weeks. Up to 300,000 unarmed civilians were brutally killed and/or raped. We never learned about that in high school, in any of the world history classes.
And what is truly horrible is when governments to hide their own faults and wrongdoings, accidents or otherwise, they seal documents and keep other stories from being heard. I was reading an article online about the Cap Arcona a ocean liner that was turned into a prisoner's ship during WWII. It is extremely sad what happened, but no one will fess up to the destruction of the ship or the thousands of concentration camp prisoners who died. A judgement can't be filed because the documents have been sealed until 2045 when all who would have been prosecuted for it are long past dead. All those people who died, and those who survived and lost loved ones, still don't have justice.
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You get the point. I could seriously go on pages of the things that I had to find out myself outside of the curriculum. I do it, because I enjoy reading. I do it, because I enjoy the characters/real people who were there, whose stories are being silenced and need to be told.
I try to do family history. I'm not very good at it and my dedication is slacking, but I try. All of those people, all of your ancestors, had their own stories. Whether it is about a little farmer from Illinois fifty years ago,or a mother in Nanking during WWII or the chambermaid of Charlemagne in the 700's or even one of the Pharaoh's servants who saw Moses and lost a child.
We can learn a lot from history. We need to learn it otherwise "we are doomed to repeat it," as the saying goes. We will repeat it if we are unaware of what is going on presently. Our history classes are good(-ish) at giving us our history from the far distant past. There is a lot to learn.
What our history classes have forgotten, or what they are told not to tell us because it's not on the AP test, is the modern history. The things that have happened recently that influence us now can keep us from repetition. Documents are being kept from us, the people of old and now. We don't get the full truth because the people who are supposed to represent us are keeping things from us. Even in National Treasure 2, there is a Book of Secrets that only Presidents can read. Look back at Nixon; look back at Benghazi, look at the potential candidates for the Presidency in 2016. There are so many secrets, hidden things, and lies that flutter around in the media shadow, so then we will vote or act a certain way.
If we don't learn our modern history from those who actually understand having been there or have done the research, as we just as gullible and illiterate as the peasants during the dark ages. If we don't know what's going on (especially us millennials who haven't understood the past presidencies and haven't been taught the last fifty or sixty years) we will be taken advantage of by people who know and run the system.
Our history books have been written by the victors over us.
Tear down the false media. Find the primary sources and make your own conclusions, not just reading the commentaries of others opinions.
Take initiative.
Learn another language and read the older texts.
Make sure the younger generations knows cursive; if they don't, they can't read those older documents unless they have someone else translate/alter them.
Read the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
Find other opinions that aren't like your own. Learn why they have it. The reason will enlighten you even if you don't change your own opinion. Discussion, not argument, is vital.
For the modern history, talk. Discuss with neighbors and family and older friends. Find out what they did during the 60's and 70's besides discoing with bellbottomed pants. They have vast amounts of knowledge to offer if you could just talk and tap into it.
We need to do something to change the way the system is being run. The best way to do that is to become informed and act, not with hostility and anger, but with dedication and understanding and kindness. Intelligence, courage, and kindness will go a long way if we want change, which we desperately need.
Thank you Wikipedia.org and Google Search: History Books for pictures.
Thank you Wikipedia.org and Google Search: History Books for pictures.
