In the U.S., a lot of our history is eurocentric, as mentioned in the podcast. I think this was an interesting point that Dr. Bezio brought up because she explains how buying materials to record “history” and important events meant having money because the tools and materials were so expensive. The ink was expensive, the paper was expensive, printing was expensive, even access to knowledge could be expensive. Knowledge is and always has been power, and it goes hand in hand with this concept of “access”—once a certain group of people have access to something, in this case, the narration of history, they control it unless they relent that power and access so that other’s can contribute. But because these were white men who saw themselves as superior to any other race or gender and colonized like crazy, they didn’t see a reason to share that access. Thus, with them being the only ones to have access, they were able to narrate history as they saw fit, which means a lot of the stuff we read about today we have to take with the frame that “hey, a racist, sexist, and classist dude probably wrote this with the intention of belittling others and making himself superior.”
I mean, take the classic case of Christopher Columbus. In elementary school, I was taught that this guy was a hero. He came over, found America, gave food to the Native Americans, and we are all here today because of him. Then, later on, and mostly on my own research, I found out that the guy was actually a disaster case, he in no way “found America,” he committed mass genocide on the native peoples and he and his band of merry weirdos gave the natives all kinds of nasty European diseases. It wasn’t grand or wonderful, it was pretty downright horrible, but because the history we learn is so Eurocentric and comes from these European white men, I was originally taught that what Columbus did was a good thing. I think that narrative needs to be removed from schools, especially when it’s being taught to impressionable young children. Students need to be educated on the truth, and not just the white man’s truth, the whole truth. We have to stop sugar-coating things and trying to carve patriotism into the youth by spreading lies, because all it’s done for me, at least, is made me angry and upset that the education system was withholding what I consider real and accurate history.
I had similar thoughts on education with the case of sugar-coating things for youth. I think it takes a certain level of emotional intelligence to fully comprehend some of the more unsettling truths that aren’t taught, which makes it difficult to fix within primary education. For that reason, I think it would be better to just leave them out until the truth can be taught in full, rather than teaching lies at an early age.
I think your take on knowledge promoting power is so interesting. Unfortunately, in our country I do not think that’s how our system works. While knowledge is necessary for people to control and guide others, power within our system comes from networking. Power comes from societal standards and is often given to white men. If there is knowledge or things that are necessary to know but people in power are conserving them, that is a danger to society.
I think the most important thing we can do in learning history is to acknowledge the biases that most of the readings are written with. I like the way you framed it – “hey, a racist, sexist, and classist dude probably wrote this with the intention of belittling others and making himself superior.” I personally think that quote should be turned into a poster and put on the wall of every history class in America.
If we are to continue teaching history in the same way we currently do- even though we shouldn’t- we need to acknowledge the fact that our way of viewing and interpreting history is not the only one. We cannot entirely discount what we currently have available and what is currently taught, that would be silly. What we need to to is diversify our curriculum and acknowledge how our understanding and perception of history has changed.