Omelogor gets into an argument with a bank manager over a road named after an officer who murdered hundreds of Igbo people. “Well,” he tells her, “You know they don’t want us to learn our history.” She responds, “Go and learn your history. It’s not anybody’s responsibility to teach you.” What did you think of this scene? Do you agree with Omelogor?
I think it’s half and half. Education should include the teaching of history but we must also educate ourselves. Learning is life long. It’s not relegated to a building.
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I’m glad a certain amount of history is covered in school, but schools can only do so much. Now, in particular, it seems like what’s covered is chosen to support a specific agenda, and a LOT gets left out. Not that that’s particularly new; I didn’t learn about the incarceration of Japanese Americans until Snow Falling on Cedars came out when I was in my 30s. So yeah, I think it’s up to each person to educate themselves to the greatest extent possible.
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I agree. It is important to be well educated and to understand and appreciate all points of view - particularly in today’s world where it is often hard to tell fact from fiction. Schools can provide the basics, but not a real understanding of the ways of the world. This requires a lot of hard work, inquiry and curiosity.
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The older I get, the more I learn about history that wasn’t taught in schools. The more I learn, the more I want to know.
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While what we are taught in school are the basics of history, it is a very fluid subject that is constantly changing and being influenced by our society, culture and individual experiences. It then becomes our responsibility to learn more through reading, reflection and understanding history’s impact, on ourselves and others.
I partly agree. I don’t think individuals from underprivileged communities should be tasked with always educating those from more privileged backgrounds, but telling people to educate themselves risks continued ignorance (because people take the path of lease resistance or miseducation (in this era of fake news and less than reputable sources). While it’s not easy, I think it’s important to steer people in directions that encourage objective and nuanced understanding.
Same here regarding Snow Falling on Cedars… I could not believe it! How was this skipped? I grew up in a large midwestern city, Schools were well integrated in that community.
I grew up in Cleveland, @Karen_K, so like you, I can’t understand how something so important wasn’t discussed. Granted, teachers have a lot of ground to cover, but still.
Omelegor is right to suggest we owe it to ourselves to take our history (as people of a certain identity that matters to us) into our own hands. I think that is what she meant. She wanted him to care about their history.
It is not unlike the message in Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars: some people in power will try to control others by “erasing” their history. We are seeing it right now in the removal of black WW2 heroes and Navajo Code Talkers from federal websites.
In a diverse society—hers, ours—there is never going to be enough time or consensus for schools to teach everything that matters. Our collective understanding of what matters changes over time, too. (Nothing about the women’s suffrage movement in my high school education! ) I say this as someone who loved history as a child, majored in it and later taught it in middle/high school (and was a journalist in between). And I am still learning things about America history at 75. I agree with those who see this as a lifelong pursuit.
What schools should do is teach where history “comes from,” and why it matters, that it is always be revised to take into account new information, new viewpoints, an active process and not just a list of dates.