I have learned that both Howard Zinn and James Loewen have provided a lot more facts about our American history than did my teachers in grade school. Much of what I was taught back then was quite skewed too. All the way from how the land we now know as the United States was founded and how our Constitution was formed, to how media still treats women today. As children we learned the Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 to discover America. But he didn’t really discover anything new at all. Native Indians were already established on this land. Columbus proved this to be true when writing about his first impression of the land. On October 13, 1492 in his journal he wrote “at daybreak great multitudes of men came to the shore. All young and of fine shapes, and very handsome. Their hair was not curly but loos and course like horse-hair.” (Loewen 54) He goes on to talk about how beautiful they were and then talks about how he planned to find out if they had gold. He ended up kidnapping about 10-25 Indians and took them back to Spain. And from there the King and Queen gave him the 17 ships, attack dogs and about 12 to 15 hundred armed men to go on a second voyage. What he did was use weapons to assert domination over others in order to gain wealth. I was to read that typically after “discovering” and island and encountering a tribe of American Indians, the Spaniards would read aloud a passage that came to be called “the Requirement” (Loewen 36). This passage basically states they had to convert to Christianity and that with the help of God they would take over, making women and children slaves and any and all deaths will be their own fault. This is something that just stuck with me from the moment I read it and just confirms why I feel the way I do about Christianity. Many, not all, seem to be quite hypocritical and follow “the book” as it works for them. I learned that the Civil War was one of the most destructive wars in the Western World, fought in 10,000 places, from west to east coast. 2% of the population died in it! And in the end, the salves won freedom although I don’t believe it was exactly what they had expected. Thousands of blacks wondered the roads, trying to find their family or work or food. Thousands more stayed on the plantation as hired hands. (class notes) I now know that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government. The manufacturers needed protective tariffs, the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts, the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands, slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways, bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds. (Zinn, Ch. 5) Clearly their goal here was to create a national, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, so that they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire, which would allow them to hold back potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. I really enjoyed the excerpt in Zinns book about Benjamin Banneker, a black man who taught himself math and astronomy, accurately predicted a solar eclipse and was appointed to plan the new city of Washington, wrote to Thomas Jefferson. He goes on a rant to say that blacks are a race of human beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world and have been long looked upon with an eye of contempt. But the following words were what most caught my attention. He said that “one universal Father hath given being to us all; and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all the same facilities…” He goes on to ask Jefferson to wean themselves from those narrow prejudices in which they have absorbed. But of course, Jefferson couldn’t change anything as he himself owned slaves. Learning that we still have slavery happening today was so disheartening. Although for the most part it is not the old slavery, it's doesn’t make it any less awful. Now slavery has no race and the common denominator is poverty. How can we LET this happen? I had no idea that pretty much everything I own comes from slaves. I want to do more to actively put a stop to this. And chocolate… dark chocolate and wine has always been one of my favorite things. Watching that movie, “Slavery A Global Investigation” literally brought me to tears and makes me not want to ever eat chocolate again. And let’s look at what has happened to women! The exclusions of women in history has created a trickle effect of this belief that men, specifically white men it seems, are the almighty most powerful, smartest and strongest in leadership. Men grew very concerned with women learning and being “too intelligent”. They tried hard to suppress the knowledge women could gain. A male dominant system is of course going to be only one sided and try to put women in the home, be a child bearer, cook and clean. The government has forced this one-sided perspective of how things should be run. But how can we get more women in leadership positions? We first as a society need to break through the old beliefs of what a woman should be and see women for their intelligence and their talents. Our little girls need to see this so that they are empowered and strive to be more than just a pretty face. The media treats women terribly and has affected our confidence and self-worth. It promotes men to look at us as a sex object, not as an equal intellectual. Media creates this fantasy of this perfect woman. One who has a perfect body, hair, face, teeth, etc. It creates anxiety for women on how they should be, instead of allowing us to accept and love ourselves for who we are. Women spend more money on beauty products than on their education and this totally disempowers them! There is a movie called “Miss Represented” that I highly recommend all the time to everyone, but specifically women, in hopes it will open their eyes. I went back to watch that movie after reading this chapter. Their statistics state that 53% of 13-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies. 78% for those of age 17. 65% of women and girls have an eating disorder. Rates of depression doubled between 2000-2010. This speaks volumes on what media is teaching to our young girls. We can’t turn our back on how the media does so much harm women AND men. When we fail to present the truth, we end up creating lies of what really happened. Why not confront our young people with issues of our past? Teenagers discuss racism, sex, drugs and violence with their friends. They play it in video games and listen to it in their music. So why not tell them the gruesome details of our past? They are our future! I believe that if we all can get the full picture of our past, from all angles, we then are able to go forth into today’s world and effectively act for our future. I hope that these textbooks fall into more hands at the educational level for our younger generation as we most definitely need a new perspective for this country to change. This semester I was constantly reminded of the saying that there are three sides to every story. This falls true in that we need to hear the story from white, blacks and Indians in order to get a better picture and form our own opinions on the past. We need change in the classroom learning curriculum if we want to see change in our society. It begins there. After this semester I am left feeling embarrassed of what our country was founded on, with the lack of ethics and good morals. I am sad to know there are so many women out there being forced to do things against their will and nobody seems to do anything about it. I am shocked to learn that slaver is still very much a thing today. And I will continue to read more on this subject to see what I can do to help stop it. Final Written Exercise This class has been such an eye-opener since I have gotten to understand quite a lot of things about history and why they are important. Having a proper understanding of the history is quite important, this way a person cannot be misled with wrong facts. One of the things that have resulted in this change has been the change in the way the teaching is taking place. For instance, when I was in school, I had to learn and understand the text so that I could even pass my exams. The teachers were then very strict about the learning. Because I remember I had to answer about 85% of my questions correctly for me even to pass my class. A couple of years down the line and this has changed. The teachers have relaxed, and the students are no longer putting in much effort. The students have now gotten a way in which they can easily manipulate the teachers by avoiding to do much of the reading (Loewen, 293). Learning has lost the value that it used to have in the past. This has been detrimental because the students are now just reading to pass the exams and not even to understand. Immediately after the test, they completely forget what they learned. One of the things that I have learned is that emotions are very important when it comes to an understanding of American history. Emotions are good because they help to understand the history and a person can have a feeling about it. For instance, learning about the death of someone prominent in the politics of a country should make a person sad since they understand the value of that person and they are aware of how much the country has lost. However, this used to be the case in the past which has now changed. Students now do not place much value and emotions on whatever they are learning, mainly because they are doing it to pass the course. You will find that most of them only go through the next two days to the exam and try to cram as much as they can. In such cases are not able to apply the past to the current issues. Failure to do this bring in a disconnect where the past is just the past, and it does not matter in the present (Loewen, 294). I have learned the importance of being able to connect the past with the present. This helps to understand why some of the things are happening the way they are. The past in some of the cases is the roots of the future. For instance, only a person who knows John F. Kennedy can be able to understand the role he played and how he shaped the present country. Understanding the role that these people played in history is the only way to have emotions. The textbooks and the teachers have also contributed to this kind of ignorance that the students have. The textbooks present the history in just a plain manner so are the teachers. This makes it boring, and the student does not understand why they have to learn about things that happened in the past even at a time when they were not even born. One of the things that can be done to make the students better understand history is to know how it relates to them and how it affects them, for instance, racism. Racism is something that is still very prevalent to date. Loewen gives a good example of this in the text “To show students how racism affects African Americans, a teacher in Iowa discriminated by eye color among members of her all-white class of third-graders for two days.” By understanding the history one can know why it is happening to date. A person can be able to understand why such kind of treatment exists. Another good example. Is understanding why the minority groups are the minority groups. This will also bring in the emotional aspect which is important when it comes to an understanding (Loewen, 295). As a learner, I have come to have a better understanding of myself. This is because I understand my roots and know why some of the things are the way they are now. For instance, I can understand why the constitution is the way it is and what led to its formation. I can connect the past and the present. Most of the things in the current political systems are things that have been borrowed in the past. This has been one way in which I can connect the past and the present. I have come to understand why some people despite having had good education support some causes, for instance, those people that supported the Vietnam war despite all of the negative effects that it had. Loewen, 299 in the text states that “The most popular revamped theory asserts that since working-class young men bore the real cost of the war, "naturally" they and their families opposed it. This explanation seems reasonable, for it does credit the working class with opposing the war and with a certain brute rationality. But it reduces the thinking of the working class to a crude personal cost-benefit analysis, implicitly denying that the less educated might take society as a whole into consideration” As I conclude, one of the things that stood out for me is that the history seems to be eroding and if people are not careful, it is not going to amount to much in the future. There is a need to change how learning is being done. The students have to change their mindsets, and they have to embrace history and stop seeing it as just dead facts. Having a new mindset will help them to understand better what they are learning. He teachers and the textbooks that have been used in schools have a lot of play when it comes to this. The teachers have to change their teaching skills and stop compromising with the students. This will make the students see the need to change. The textbooks also have to present the information in a way that the students find more comfortable to learn. Emotions are a big part of the learning process. The textbooks have to change the way in which information has been presented (Loewen, 303). This has been one of the things that have resulted in the disconnect. It has to be done in a way that makes the history seem more fun and make the students understand it better. FINAL GIVEN EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SEEN, HEARD, FELT, EXPERIENCED, DISCUSSED AND READ THIS SEMESTER, ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED THIS SEMESTER? MORE SPECIFICALLY, WHAT LESSONS HAVE YOU DRAWN FROM YOUR STUDIES AND DISCUSSIONS (BOTH IN AND OUTSIDE OF THIS COURSE) ABOUT THE HISTORY YOU HAVE LEARNED THIS SEMESTER, AND WHAT ETHICAL DILEMMAS HAVE ARISEN FOR YOU AS A RESULT OF THIS NEW INFORMATION? COMPREHENSION DOES NOT MEAN DENYING THE OUTRAGEOUS, DEDUCING THE UNPRECEDENTED FROM PRECEDENCE, OR EXPLAINING PHENOMENA BY SUCH ANALOGIES AND GENERALITIES THAT THE IMPACT OF REALITY AND THE SHOCK OF EXPERIENCE ARE NO LONGER FELT. IT MEANS, RATHER, EXAMINING AND BEARING CONSCIOUSLY THE BURDEN WHICH OUR CENTURY HAS PLACED ON US – NEITHER DENYING ITS EXISTENCE NOR SUBMITTING MEEKLY TO ITS WEIGHT.” ~ HANNAH ARENDT DIRECTIONS  Your response to the question must be typed—twelve point font, double-spaced, one-inch margins. In writing your answer, please do not exceed five pages.  In your response, use your assigned text(s), the instructor’s handouts, class notes taken from discussions, and any other SCHOLARLY sources you may want.  Your generalizations must be supported by direct citations from the text, class notes, or instructor’s handouts.  Citations should be made in MLA format. For readings, class notes or presentations, you might use: (Zinn, 26) or (Loewen, 3) or (class notes) or (Powerpoint, Cold War).  Note: You must cite parenthetically throughout your narrative. Please follow this format. There should be many citations throughout your response taken from the sources noted above because assumptions and interpretations must be bolstered by citations. The strength of your response is dependent largely upon the number of citations from the assigned sources.  Do not include a bibliography.  You may consult with your classmates in formulating an answer to this question. However, you must write your own, unique, independent answer to this question. “HISTORY IS FICTION, EXCEPT FOR THE PARTS THAT I LIKE, WHICH ARE, OF COURSE, TRUE.” ~ JIM CORDER Book #1: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen This text is available FREE online, but can also be purchased or rented.
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