Why should i Study History of Life for Building a Better Future

Introduction

To engage in activism or advocate for social change without learning and analyzing history is to attempt to grow a tree without planting a single seed. If humans are machines, then history is our fuel. It propels us forward and makes that distant horizon of progress feel just a little bit closer. History isn’t just a list of dates and names. History is destruction and creation, betrayal and unity, tyranny, and rebellion. Our own country wouldn’t be here today if the Founding Fathers had not had an expansive knowledge of history to work from.

They crafted the idea for a republic based on representational democracy from the democratic system of government established in Ancient Greece. 

Body

History as the Fuel for Progress: Understanding the Significance of Learning History

Several writers have criticized the approach to history in education and, to an extent, society as a whole. Loewen writes about how education misappropriates various figures from history and contorts their image into simple parables for our own consumption, the way a clown twists balloons into the shapes of animals. Through the filter of a kyriarchal education system, Helen Keller’s life of socialist activism and writing on the intersection of ableism with race and class is cut down to her childhood when she overcame deaf-blindness and learned to communicate with other people. Woodrow Wilson’s legislation supporting racial segregation in American society and his numerous military interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Nicaragua is dusted under the rug so that his role in ending World War I and creating the League of Nations can be praised by students. An entire generation is raised with a story of a strong-willed activist boiled down to a digestible inspirational story, and the story of an intolerant leader boiled down to an “epic” war story (Loewen, 1995, p. 12-20).

Weaving the Future: The Role of History in Shaping Society

All of this critique about history leaves us with a lot to ponder. The key is not only about “what should we learn from history?” but “how do we learn from history?”. Since history has been shown to intersect with education in many regards, it is helpful to look to Paulo Freire’s advice in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” He speaks of how instead of teachers presenting lessons as “deposit-making” in which facts and dates are simply poured into students’ heads for memorization, they should present lessons based on “problem-prosing” to engage the students more (Freire, 1968, p. 79). Freire explains that “in problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, 1968, p. 83). This method would display excellent results when applied to history. Instead of just learning a summary of the narratives that led us to our current state, students must learn how to comprehend and furthermore critique these narratives. They should ask, “Where did this rebellion go wrong?”, “what systems bred this intolerance?”, “How did this economic system collapse on itself?”. To nurture minds in this way would mean that these students would go on to become people who can develop individual as well as collective plans for how to build their future society.

The drawing that I made for this assignment depicts the text of a history book quite literally leaping off the page and turning it into a thread. This thread is then used by a sewing machine to weave a fabric labeled “FUTURE,” thus metaphorically weaving the future of society. The theme behind the photo is about how every generation needs a healthy and deep comprehension of history in order to build a better future, as well as develop a plan for how to make that future a reality. Since words and ideas are technically not physical things, people tend not to think that they can have as much of an impact on the world as they really do. That’s why I wanted to show it as a physical material, such as fabric and thread as well. It was meant to show how the immaterial world of thought and ideology can make the leap to the material world of action and creation. I decided not to add color to the picture and keep it in black, white, and grey to mimic the monochromatic photos that we view so much of history in when we watch documentaries or read textbooks.

Conclusion

So let’s set forth with a new mindset on history. Let’s teach people that the narratives that built our current world weren’t only in black and white but also in varying shades of grey. New powers can be created… but sometimes at the cost of great destruction. People or peoples can unite with others… but sometimes only to betray a common enemy. The oppressed can lead a successful rebellion… but sometimes they themselves become the oppressors and the tyrants. To show these stories in a simple “black and white” would mean the mistakes and errors, along with the radical and revolutionary acts of important figures, would be trapped in the shadows or lost in the glare. To achieve this, we must engage students with the never-ending story of history, for they themselves are participating in it every moment of their lives. It is they who can illuminate those shadows and balance the glare. They are the ones who can reveal the radical beliefs of heroes we thought we knew everything about and the villainous acts of leaders we thought were angels. Let people know all the details of all the trials in the ongoing social experiment we call human civilization.

References

1. Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. The New Press.

Did you like this example?

277

12