There is a lot of American history that is left out of history classes at a young age. It is not until you reacher an older, “more acceptaptable” age that you learn about these topics. For many people this time never comes because they leave school before it occurs or the schools they are at choose to never address it. Both of these readings address parts of history that are either not touched in schools or just kind of glazed over.

In the reading by Zinn, I appreciate the way that he described that history should be taught from different perspectives. Learning about Andrew Jackson from the perspective of the Cherokee or the signing of the Constitution from the perspective of slaves would help people to understand better the plights that groups they do not identify with underwent throughout history. It would help to avoid only representing the history of the wealthy, white, ruling class in America. Last week in my Justice and Civil Society class we began discussing patriotism and its relations to sentimentality with history. One interesting point that was brought up was the balance between despair and sentimentality when looking at history. The author that we were reading for that class argued that people should address history with a sense of historical imagination. Essentially this means that people should separate the wisdom of past from the people themselves (separate the teachings of the Founding Fathers from the Founding Fathers themselves) and build on the wisdom while not idealizing those that created the wisdom. I think that this sort of approach combined with the approach for teaching history from different perspectives that Zinn laid out would help to avoid the romanticization and white-washing of history that happens in the current education system.

Being from Virginia and interested in voting rights, I really enjoyed Hayter’s article. The disenfranchisement of Black Americans from the political process is not something that has been skipped in my education, but has been glossed over. In high school, teachers used the the election of a majority black council in Richmond as an example of how Virginia as a whole reacted to desegregation and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. All the while, the ignored the fact that the next county over was formed by splitting off from my county because they wanted to continue segregation that the easiest way to do that was to ensure only white people lived in the county. The choice to include the information that made Virginia look good rather that that that was harmful for minority groups further proves the point made above of topics being glossed over when history is taught. Also, it further helps to prove Zinn’s idea that history should be taught from different perspectives. In this case, voting rights and desegregation movements should be taught from the perspective of Black Americans.