the history of history

I have always loved history--the subject history, the study of and the stories of and the paraphernalia that we keep to remind us of the stories.  These days, history is being discussed because of the inability to pull the perspective back from the people in power to a more global and all-seeing-eye perspective.  That is a hard thing to do.  I have read some books where authors did a fair job and seen a few movies where directors did a not as good as they had hoped job.  Perspective is deceptively difficult to get past.

When I was a child, 7ish, I already liked history.  I didn't officially take it in school, but holidays, church, common conversation was steeped in the history of both the dominant culture and our specific families.  It was also enmeshed with the times.  My favorite time was the prehistoric time, with cave boys on mammoths and dinosaurs moving rocks to build houses and fossils in LIFE books that looked a little like birds, a little like monsters and human bones that looked like monkeys or humans or monsters.  Those images became a part of my life view.  I could not imagine a world with evolution, without fossil remains, without cave men and cave paintings.  I thought we all shared those images.  I thought they were universal. 

Forty years later, I discovered that there were people--not just in far and strange lands, but my age in my town than thought that all those images were frauds:  Science fiction created by the devil to draw us down a false path.   Their children questioned the moon walk--the first one, although they were no more fond of Micheal Jackson's version years later.    They didn't have my LIFE books or my Childcraft books when they were 7.  They did not share my perception of history.

History, as taught in public school in the United States was always very patriotic. It always started with Columbus discovering the NEW WORLD. Then we were a continent of people that came here to escape religious persecution and find freedom.  It was taught as if the 284 years between discovery and the beginning of the United States of America becoming a nation was a short little moment.  The only thing of import being that central America was taken by those greedy Spaniards for the gold, and the first thanksgiving with Indians and Pilgrams sharing a meal.  Then it was time for the revolution and the signing of the declaration of Independence. 

Two hundred and eighty four years.  That is 14 generations (with the standard 20 years per),  a single chapter in my high school history book.  From first grade coloring of turkeys and pilgrams to second grade"s singing program of patriotic songs like "this land is your land" (no one explained who wrote that or that he was from my state or that he was controversial at the time) to "america the beautiful", to "the star spangled banner" and others, so many others.  Then we started history as such, and it always started with Columbus, then conquering of the Aztecs (or maybe I remember that because our neighbors vacationed in Mexico City and brought back slides of the Aztec artifacts and stories of people being sacrificed and the conquistadors vanquishing them.) and then the Mayflower, and the revolution and the civil war and we never actually made it past the civil war.  I took the second half of US history in college because I had never heard anything about it except from old relatives. We also had Oklahoma history and that started with the conquistadors traveling through our state and then skipped to the trail of tears and the Land rush.  Then Statehood and stealing the capital from Guthrie and, well it was taught by a coach, and I did learn a little about football.

College history was better, at least once it was classes chosen and not classes required.  History professors do like history.  Even the required class required me to look a little more deeply--or perhaps that was also due to the time, we had just pulled out of the 60's and demonstrations and civil unrest.  Such things can cause thoughtful people to question what they have always been told.  My socialogy teacher was a self-proclaimed socialist.  If he had been less irascible and annoying it might have actually made me examine my supreme hatred of that system.  We were still in the Cold War and socialism was just another name for communism.  That was about as bad as a government could be.

Perspective.

Things I never heard about in my public education in the U.S.A. 

• The french revolution
• Cromwell
• The science and arts in the Ottoman Empire.
• The Cause of the Russian Revolution
• The Cause of the fall of China and Rise of "RED" China.
• Why we were in Vietnam
• Why we were in North Korea
• Why we went to fight in WWI
• Why we were so slow to go to fight in WWII
• Why we ended up fighting with Japan (that is still a little unclear, but they seem to have fired the first shot--Pearl Harbor and all)
• Who was on the land that was given to the Jews after WWII to become Israel
• The colonialization of Africa, India, South America, Australia.
• Local things like--tribal schools, reservations, small pox infected blankets,

 So what was the goal of my history classes in my public education?  Was it to make me think?  Was it to make me understand how we had all reached this place in time we call today?  We all heard about communinist countries that rewrote history and made it seem as if the communists were the good guys and the government that they had destroyed was the enemy.  We have now heard of Europe history buffs telling us that Hitler did not try to destroy the Jews.  He have heard that North Koreans believe that their Leader is divine.

What do we really know.  What has history taught us. 

We know that whoever is in power controls history.  We know that teaching people a story that makes those in power out to be all good and making those that were destroyed, overthrown, misused all bad or in some way inferior makes  us feel we are on the side of winners.  We identify with the powerful.  We are loyal.  We are patriotic. 

I have talked to people that live in this country and that have their own family history which does not jibe with the current story of history.  People that remember their grandmother telling them of punishment for speaking the language of her family while living at an Indian school.  People that remember when Korea was one country, or that are here as Zorastrians and are afraid of the christians in their neighborhood because religious freedom only goes so far.  People that have heard stories of slavery and are still seeing the effects of being treated as if they are not part of this country.  People that came here recently from another country and found that we are not really that free, that equal--that the land of opportunity is more bumper sticker than truth.

Public schools were created at the beginning of the industrial age to help educate and indoctrinate a rural and uneducated group of people that had been living on farms and ranches and otherwise "off the land" so that they would make good workers in their factories.  The factories needed people with the ability read and do calculations, to follow directions and submit to authority.    Public schools were made, not for the good of the common man, but for the good of the rich and their newest money making enterprises.  The children of the moneyed had always had access to education.  They didn't learn to sing patriotic songs and color turkeys.  They recieved a "classic education"  which we would now equate to an expensive prep school. 

History, if it is to keep us from repeating it biggest mistakes, must be a truer history.  It must include the history of those places we, in the nation, have ignored.  It must tell the story of the oppressed as well as the glory stories of the oppressors.  We must all seek out a more complete, more global, story if we are to avoid the mistakes that have already been made repeatedly.