carrots...
Today, I planted a row of carrots and pulled some weeds at the Farm with a master gardener I work with. As we worked, she told me stories about the history of her people from her perspective as a black civil rights activist who once marched with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta. Crazy, huh? Her stories helped illuminate for me, history as living.
I realize now that history as we learned it in public school is truly dead, at least to me. The premise for this claim: narratives portrayed in mainstream media are dictated by a narrow perspective, which when distributed and taught to the rest of us, helps to enforce and perpetuate a particular paradigm. (Alternative: A People's History of the United States.) The particular paradigm, however, might not produce ideal outcomes for the majority of its participants who believe and perpetuate the narrative. Rather, it is more likely that the particular paradigm will produce outcomes ideal for the minority who dictate it.
Okay, that was really wordy, sorry.
I tend to think of it like a game of Monopoly, except there's a powerful minority that can make up and change the rules without telling the other players about them. Of course, those who dictate the rules will do best in the game and everyone else will likely lose. Yeah, the majority of the players are pissed about it, but they're caught up in the confusion and are trying to learn the new rules to at least keep themselves in the game. And the rule-makers offer to educate the rest of the players about the new rules and even provide assistance to them, like low-paying jobs, high-interest loans, and unreliable welfare that will keep them afloat and make the game seem "more fair." In the end, the minority (10%) ends up with most (73%) of the property and cash.
Why is this important? Because we define ourselves and our neighbors based on the stories we hear. Narratives provide us with material to judge ourselves and others with; a source of justifications for our actions and thoughts. Every individual has a unique story, as does every ethnic and socioeconomic group. Although it's impossible to hear them all, these stories, as accurate representations of the living, can help to better shape democratic societies. I think?
I read a Zinn's a people's history in high school b/c it was assigned to my AP US History class. We read the American Pageant for most of the year of course. Zinn wasn't assigned to honors or regular history.
ReplyDeleteMost people actually say that we were taught the most liberal-favoring history when compared to past and current generations in the US (where that falls in the actual spectrum is, of course, up for debate).
I think the non-hegemonic content is there to some degree... but the method is quite divorced from anything that would connect it to the current times.