Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Some forgotten comments of October
I commented on Paris Hiton's blog on Can you come back after the death penalty? I commented on ideology's blog on National Healthcare.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Question and Answer
Miz Alice talks to William Least Heat-Moon about the history of the portion of Maryland’s coast that she lived on. She speaks from the personal point-of-view as an observer and a predictor of what will happen to those isles along the coast. Do you think that when we teach children about history today, we miss out on having it told from a personal account rather than boiling it down to impersonal facts? Does the lack personal relation in which historical events are being taught lessen their significance and speculation of what will happen in the future in those areas?
It does have a key element missing when something is taught in an impersonal way. When it is just the facts, a student can easily avoid thinking about it if they can, in any way, think that it would never happen to them. Telling history from personal yet accurate accounts gives the events dimension and a sense of reality even though the students are so distanced from these events by both location and time.
An example of boiling down history to just the facts was exemplified in my high school. The Holocaust was talked about with the same tone and indifference as about how the first horses came to the Americas. We then had a Holocaust survivor come and speak to us in chapel about her experiences and struggle for life as so many around her died. I cannot emphasize enough the difference it made in the way I viewed and thought about the Holocaust, the horrific ideology behind it, and even in ways to prevent something as atrocious from ever happening again. To be moved to think about a topic as deeply as I did about the Holocaust takes a personal connection and relation.
Events that are presented blandly to us are briefly memorized for a test, and then they fade away just as fast as if they were but a passing footprint on the beach. Repetition is a way to permanently memorize historical facts yet the educational system only teaches a section of history twice at most over our years of schooling. Thus without a personal account recorded as history passes us by, we are more likely than naught to repeat the mistakes of our forefathers and we will have to rediscover all the solutions that they previously found. Let us teach history from gripping personal accounts so that the learning, experiences, and discoveries of our predecessors were not in vain.
It does have a key element missing when something is taught in an impersonal way. When it is just the facts, a student can easily avoid thinking about it if they can, in any way, think that it would never happen to them. Telling history from personal yet accurate accounts gives the events dimension and a sense of reality even though the students are so distanced from these events by both location and time.
An example of boiling down history to just the facts was exemplified in my high school. The Holocaust was talked about with the same tone and indifference as about how the first horses came to the Americas. We then had a Holocaust survivor come and speak to us in chapel about her experiences and struggle for life as so many around her died. I cannot emphasize enough the difference it made in the way I viewed and thought about the Holocaust, the horrific ideology behind it, and even in ways to prevent something as atrocious from ever happening again. To be moved to think about a topic as deeply as I did about the Holocaust takes a personal connection and relation.
Events that are presented blandly to us are briefly memorized for a test, and then they fade away just as fast as if they were but a passing footprint on the beach. Repetition is a way to permanently memorize historical facts yet the educational system only teaches a section of history twice at most over our years of schooling. Thus without a personal account recorded as history passes us by, we are more likely than naught to repeat the mistakes of our forefathers and we will have to rediscover all the solutions that they previously found. Let us teach history from gripping personal accounts so that the learning, experiences, and discoveries of our predecessors were not in vain.
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