Quote:
Originally Posted by Tully Mars
Generation have been spoon fed a sanitized version of US history. I find it odd how upset people get when they hear anything even remotely negative regarding our past.
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I found it very odd as well, since when I was a student of history, I was relieved to find out that there was so much more to learn beyond the "let's grow corn using fish that the injuns gave us" thing (as one example). I didn't care if it was negative or positive--what mattered was that it HAPPENED, period, and I wanted to know what happened... even if it was absolutely repulsive and horrible, and never made it into the history books. I mean, that's history... it happened, whether we want to admit it or not. I did not want to take a "chill pill" about it. (Hello, Matrix?)
It bothered me at a very deep level that the students I was teaching did not care to learn what was true. They wanted to "feel good" about their country--they did not want their dreamworld patriotism to be messed with, not even when that unquestioning patriotism witnessed thousands of young men and women of their own age marching off to a foreign war and getting blown up, or not getting blown up but coming home with PTSD and all kinds of other life-changing ailments. They wanted to remain blind, and believe all that was good about America (e.g. WWII)... and covered their eyes and ears when I would show slides of what America had done in other places, accusing me of making things up, that their nation couldn't possibly be guilty of doing anything wrong, ever. It was fundamentally disturbing, as a teacher, to face that kind of reaction in a classroom... and to know that the parents who were reinforcing those beliefs on the other side, were a brick wall that I could only bang my head against.
Sometimes though, very rarely, I contemplate going back to teach US History and fighting that massive brick wall in American public education. Sometimes I think it's the most responsible thing that I could be doing with my time (particularly since I already have the qualifications for it, so I could step right back into it with my teaching certificate and advanced degree). But sometimes I don't want to think about facing that wall again... it all feels so pointless at times. It's the same feeling I get around here sometimes.