1. Sunny Days
2. MaryAnna
3. Old, comfortable shoes
4. When you smile at someone, and they smile back
5. Knowing that "In times like these, in times like those, what will be will be, and so it goes."(i.e. the music of Jack Johnson)
6. Having an example to follow
7. Knowing where I'm going
8. Wondering where I'm going
9. Knowing that no matter how much I learn or how I come to understand the world, that there is always more to learn and understand.
10. Those people you meet that remind you that even though people do terrible, disgusting things to each other, we are still essentially good at heart
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Questions, Knowing
I've never been very good at dealing with life. What is life? so far life seems to be moments of confusion, wrapped in sadness and worry, garnished with the occasional moments of clarity. Clarity, so what is that? Is it love? Is it Faith, understanding or knowledge. Is clarity happiness? or does happiness bring clarity? How do we understand the world around us? Do we look to God or some other higher power? Given all the beliefs in the world, there is what? like, a 99.9% chance of being wrong about everything I believe in, usually that .1% is enough to keep me going, but not right now. I look at the world and all I see is my own confusion. I ask myself questions that I can't answer; Why? Why do I act the way I do? Why can't I believe in anything? I wish my mind, normally wide open, and accepting of most things would just close. I wish I could be sure of JUST ONE thing. I wish i KNEW one thing without doubt. I wish I KNEW that I wanted to be a teacher, a writer, I wish I KNEW that the God that I claim to follow was real, I wish I KNEW that I married the right person. I wish I KNEW who my friends were, I wish I KNEW that there was a purpose to life, but I don't KNOW any of those things. I think them REALLY HARD most of the time. How do I know? I guess I just don't.
Friday, March 13, 2009
10 things that turned me from a hardcore conservative republican to left-leaning independent:
1. The Bush administration's disgusting mismanagement of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
2. The Iraq War and my intrinsic opposition to its every facet.
3.The music of John Mayer.
4. Getting married.
5. Becoming a college student.
6. The music of Steve Earle.
7. The music of John Lennon.
8. The documentary The Party's over, and footage of the '68 and 2000 DNC and '99 WTO protests (When I see American police officers opening fire on crowds of unarmed U.S. citizens engaged in their first amendment right to protest, it makes me want to cry.)
9. The fact that 45 million people in America can't afford access to basic medical care, even hard-working citizens like my wife and me.
10. Eight years of the Bush administration. Period.
2. The Iraq War and my intrinsic opposition to its every facet.
3.The music of John Mayer.
4. Getting married.
5. Becoming a college student.
6. The music of Steve Earle.
7. The music of John Lennon.
8. The documentary The Party's over, and footage of the '68 and 2000 DNC and '99 WTO protests (When I see American police officers opening fire on crowds of unarmed U.S. citizens engaged in their first amendment right to protest, it makes me want to cry.)
9. The fact that 45 million people in America can't afford access to basic medical care, even hard-working citizens like my wife and me.
10. Eight years of the Bush administration. Period.
Going Beyond The Green: Discovering the Irish-American Identity
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? This question is universal; building our identity is something that all people do from the time they are born to the time they die. It is a continuous process of discovery and re-discovery that makes us who we are as people and determines the face that we show the world. But how is it that we discover this identity? What is it that makes us who we are? Philosophers, writers and thinkers throughout the ages too, have asked this question. Is it our parents, our skin color, or how much money we have? Where we’re from? Or is it something deeper, something far more existential that lies within us; is it something that we can define? In attempting to answer this question for myself I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of cultural heritage and identity. This is a very important part of how we establish our identity as people. The question I have been exploring is, how is cultural identity constructed? Is it entirely a result of the geographic heritage of our families, is it the cultural surroundings in which we were raised, or something that we define for ourselves by the choices we make? These questions led me to a book by politician and civil rights activist Tom Hayden titled, Irish on the Inside, and a frank, sad, but poignant essay by Irish Writer, Robert McLiam Wilson called “Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity.” After reading and reflecting on these three texts, I am coming to believe that cultural heritage and identity are just as much a creation of the individual as they are a result of family background, or hereditary geography.
Irish Americans face struggle today, which is complicated by geography. We are often three generations or more out of Ireland and are separated from it by an ocean. This makes it that much harder to hold on to our heritage in a society that demands conformity. Because of this, the Irish American has been absorbed, for the most part into the unfortunate category of “White/Non-Hispanic.”(Hayden, 2) By being lumped into the category of “white”, we are robbed of status as an independent ethnicity with its own rich history. Should we accept this as natural; simply fade into the obscurity of white America and forget our heritage as mere nostalgia? Hayden explores this when he writes, “Today’s Irish-Americans face a post-assimilation issue…Should we not embrace our Americanism and forget the past?...Many of us think so…but many others maintain at least as sentimental attachment, and rising numbers have a kind of hunger for ethnic identity that Americanism cannot meet except superficially.”(Hayden, 29) The superficial Irish-American identity is all too evident in American society. Images of leprechauns, shamrocks and pots o’ gold at the end of the rainbow, make a mockery of the rich heritage of Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day, as it is celebrated in the United States stands as a testament to the pervasive misconstruction of what it mean to be Irish. There is much more to the Irish persona, then drinking green beer and singing “Danny boy” once a year. McLiam Wilson, an native Irishman describes this superficiality. He writes, “When well received, this fake concoction of myth and bullshit is reflected in the mirror of imprecise good will and sentimental foolishness…Over the years I’ve watched the fundamental concepts of what it is to be Irish being altered by common-currency American errors.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) This superficial viewpoint of what it means to be Irish may have encouraged a generally positive; if not sentimental attitude but does it do more harm than good? How are Irish Americans to tell the difference between our own distinct heritage and the cartoony, “lucky charms” image that has forced its way into American pop-culture? Constructing a racial identity is hard enough without having these distracting inaccuracies to mislead and confuse us. McLiam Wilson talks about the effects of this pop-culture image in Ireland itself. He says, “Here in the ‘old country,’ when we hear that New Yorkers are in green-kilted bagpipe bands(an entirely Scottish phenomenon) on St. Patrick’s Day, we immediately look around for somewhere to buy green kilts and bagpipes.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) Even the Irish themselves cannot seem to escape the fate of the cheap plastic shamrock that is “Irishness.” If the citizens of Ireland itself are swept up into the wave of commercialized irishisms, than how are we, who are so far removed from the “old country” to tell the forgeries from the genuine article? In order to understand what it means to be Irish, we have to go beyond the green, and try to understand the rich history of Ireland, and the struggles that brought our grandparents and great-grandparents across the ocean to start new lives in America.
The monster that is American consumerism seems to have no patience for history and heritage if it won’t sell. American culture likes to appropriate, very little in fact can be considered uniquely American. The American melting pot tends to take aspects of other cultures and integrate them into itself, warping and changing them as it does so. This is what has happened to the Irish in America. The aspects of Irish culture that were absorbed into the America have become twisted and unrecognizable, their significance forgotten. Those aspects of Irish culture that did not fit into American culture were cast aside, and the Irish-Americans have been forced over the years to cast off their Irish roots and simply become Americans.
With these challenges, it can be very difficult to determine how exactly an American of any background is to construct their identity. In the end I think it boils down to choice. In choosing to be Irish, or any of the hundreds of other cultures represented in the US, we begin to lay the building blocks of our personal cultural identities. To paraphrase an old adage, “we think, therefore we are.” At some point we decide, consciously, to be what we are going to be. Our country of origin may have a seemingly insurmountable influence, but we must choose whether or not to embrace our true heritage. Tom Hayden relates the story of how he came to embrace his heritage. He writes, “in 1968, accused of being less than a red blooded American by the authorities, having been beaten up and indicted in Chicago, having been targeted for “neutralization” by J. Edgar Hoover, I saw marchers in Northern Ireland singing “We Shall Overcome” and, in an epiphany, discovered that I was Irish on the Inside.”(Hayden, 4) Whether this realization is born out of crisis or a gradual process of self-discovery, we must each decide who, and what, we are. Men and women must decide to construct their own identity and heritage. When we come to the place where this decision is based not on the whims of others, geographical origin or the demands of family, skin color or language; then we realize that each one is responsible for themselves and no one else, and we can begin to move toward unity and understanding.
Works Cited.
Hayden, Tom. Irish On The Inside. London: Verso, 2001.
Mcliam Wilson, Robert. “Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity.” The Anchor Essay
Annual: The Best of 2008. Ed. Philip Lopate. New York: Anchor, 1998. 280-86
Irish Americans face struggle today, which is complicated by geography. We are often three generations or more out of Ireland and are separated from it by an ocean. This makes it that much harder to hold on to our heritage in a society that demands conformity. Because of this, the Irish American has been absorbed, for the most part into the unfortunate category of “White/Non-Hispanic.”(Hayden, 2) By being lumped into the category of “white”, we are robbed of status as an independent ethnicity with its own rich history. Should we accept this as natural; simply fade into the obscurity of white America and forget our heritage as mere nostalgia? Hayden explores this when he writes, “Today’s Irish-Americans face a post-assimilation issue…Should we not embrace our Americanism and forget the past?...Many of us think so…but many others maintain at least as sentimental attachment, and rising numbers have a kind of hunger for ethnic identity that Americanism cannot meet except superficially.”(Hayden, 29) The superficial Irish-American identity is all too evident in American society. Images of leprechauns, shamrocks and pots o’ gold at the end of the rainbow, make a mockery of the rich heritage of Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day, as it is celebrated in the United States stands as a testament to the pervasive misconstruction of what it mean to be Irish. There is much more to the Irish persona, then drinking green beer and singing “Danny boy” once a year. McLiam Wilson, an native Irishman describes this superficiality. He writes, “When well received, this fake concoction of myth and bullshit is reflected in the mirror of imprecise good will and sentimental foolishness…Over the years I’ve watched the fundamental concepts of what it is to be Irish being altered by common-currency American errors.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) This superficial viewpoint of what it means to be Irish may have encouraged a generally positive; if not sentimental attitude but does it do more harm than good? How are Irish Americans to tell the difference between our own distinct heritage and the cartoony, “lucky charms” image that has forced its way into American pop-culture? Constructing a racial identity is hard enough without having these distracting inaccuracies to mislead and confuse us. McLiam Wilson talks about the effects of this pop-culture image in Ireland itself. He says, “Here in the ‘old country,’ when we hear that New Yorkers are in green-kilted bagpipe bands(an entirely Scottish phenomenon) on St. Patrick’s Day, we immediately look around for somewhere to buy green kilts and bagpipes.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) Even the Irish themselves cannot seem to escape the fate of the cheap plastic shamrock that is “Irishness.” If the citizens of Ireland itself are swept up into the wave of commercialized irishisms, than how are we, who are so far removed from the “old country” to tell the forgeries from the genuine article? In order to understand what it means to be Irish, we have to go beyond the green, and try to understand the rich history of Ireland, and the struggles that brought our grandparents and great-grandparents across the ocean to start new lives in America.
The monster that is American consumerism seems to have no patience for history and heritage if it won’t sell. American culture likes to appropriate, very little in fact can be considered uniquely American. The American melting pot tends to take aspects of other cultures and integrate them into itself, warping and changing them as it does so. This is what has happened to the Irish in America. The aspects of Irish culture that were absorbed into the America have become twisted and unrecognizable, their significance forgotten. Those aspects of Irish culture that did not fit into American culture were cast aside, and the Irish-Americans have been forced over the years to cast off their Irish roots and simply become Americans.
With these challenges, it can be very difficult to determine how exactly an American of any background is to construct their identity. In the end I think it boils down to choice. In choosing to be Irish, or any of the hundreds of other cultures represented in the US, we begin to lay the building blocks of our personal cultural identities. To paraphrase an old adage, “we think, therefore we are.” At some point we decide, consciously, to be what we are going to be. Our country of origin may have a seemingly insurmountable influence, but we must choose whether or not to embrace our true heritage. Tom Hayden relates the story of how he came to embrace his heritage. He writes, “in 1968, accused of being less than a red blooded American by the authorities, having been beaten up and indicted in Chicago, having been targeted for “neutralization” by J. Edgar Hoover, I saw marchers in Northern Ireland singing “We Shall Overcome” and, in an epiphany, discovered that I was Irish on the Inside.”(Hayden, 4) Whether this realization is born out of crisis or a gradual process of self-discovery, we must each decide who, and what, we are. Men and women must decide to construct their own identity and heritage. When we come to the place where this decision is based not on the whims of others, geographical origin or the demands of family, skin color or language; then we realize that each one is responsible for themselves and no one else, and we can begin to move toward unity and understanding.
Works Cited.
Hayden, Tom. Irish On The Inside. London: Verso, 2001.
Mcliam Wilson, Robert. “Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity.” The Anchor Essay
Annual: The Best of 2008. Ed. Philip Lopate. New York: Anchor, 1998. 280-86
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Why The Night
This is a poem that came to me while working a youth overnighter at the YMCA. It was around 3am and all the kids had gone to bed, I was sitting at the front listening to music and just thinking and it came so I fired up word and jotted it down.
Why The Night? - By Brad Ferris
Why is night so much lonelier than day?
Is it the dark?
The shapeless shadow that seems to surround you
Or is it the stillness?
The tangible calm that wraps you tight
Like a blanket
Why at night do thoughts come?
So freely, unbidden
They come
Like loneliness
Out of the dark
Out of the still
Taking form only for a moment then vanishing
Like headlights on the road
Shining bright for a moment
To push back the night
Why The Night? - By Brad Ferris
Why is night so much lonelier than day?
Is it the dark?
The shapeless shadow that seems to surround you
Or is it the stillness?
The tangible calm that wraps you tight
Like a blanket
Why at night do thoughts come?
So freely, unbidden
They come
Like loneliness
Out of the dark
Out of the still
Taking form only for a moment then vanishing
Like headlights on the road
Shining bright for a moment
To push back the night
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Looking Into the Mirror of History
History is fluid. It changes from one person to another, in how it is taught and how it is perceived. History, like scripture or politics is impossible to absorb and analyze without personal bias. Every school child in America is taught stories of our national history that exemplify the greatest virtues of what Americans feel they should be. Catch phrases like, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” are a part of the collective memory of almost anyone who attended public school. When we are spoon fed this kind of information in this way it becomes very easy to accept what we are learning as fact. It may never occur to us that the epics of our childhoods are in fact, monumental falsehoods. Author James Loewen, in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, explores many of the historical inconsistencies taught today, he writes, “History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason…Textbooks encourage students to believe that history is facts to be learned”(Loewen, 8)With this in mind, it is important to analyze history, and how it is taught, with a critical eye. The transformation from historical accuracy to cultural myth has to do a great deal with how reading itself has changed over the last hundred years. We have access to so much more information in our day and age than did those in prior generations; whether it is newspaper, television or the internet, Americans are bombarded with information. With so much going in and out of our brains all the time we have very little time to process, analyze and verify the information that we consume. As an adult, engaged in a study of history it is crucial to understand how society’s interpretation of history has been skewed by an education system that discourages deeper understanding of the events that have defined it.
How we read as a society and a culture greatly affects how we study and learn about history. In his Essay “The Owl Has Flown” writer Sven Birkerts takes a close look at how our culture reads. He talks about how our society has moved away from intense reading because of technology and the ready availability of material. He says, “With the proliferation of mechanically produced books and the democratization of education, reading not only spread rapidly, but changed its basic nature.”(Birkerts, 71) The concept of the democratization of education is an interesting one to explore, and ties directly into the modern day perceptions of history. Education today is to a great extent a pedagogy of the masses. No longer do isolated teachers in small schoolhouses relate their knowledge of the world, to small groups of pupils. Today, mighty school corporations educate thousands of children at a time. Curriculum is handed down from an administrator who receives it from other sources. This is one factor that leads to events being misconstrued. It is human nature to change facts or ideas to fit our own interests. People do this every day. Who hasn’t run a stop sign on a rainy day and blamed it on the weather. We immediately seek an outside source upon which to blame our deficiency. We say “Well, the roads were wet and I didn’t think I could stop.” We say this to eliminate the guilt of doing wrong. We conveniently change our perception of the event to feel better, and in doing so, our perception becomes our reality. The same thing occurs on a larger scale in history. The story of Christopher Columbus is one of the best examples. Columbus is portrayed as one of the greatest minds in history, as a man whose courage and spirit of exploration paved the way for the founding of our nation. This depiction of Columbus feels very good. The truth however, is inconvenient; the truth that perhaps he wasn’t as altruistic and noble as some would have us believe. It does not feel good to teach that the driving force behind Columbus’s first and subsequent voyages was not to “prove the world was round”(a fact that was actually well accepted by most scholars of the time.) or any such nonsense, but to secure a tariff free route to the East Indies, thereby becoming very wealthy. In chapter 2 of his book, which specifically talks about Columbus, Loewen writes, “Textbooks downplay the pursuit of wealth as a motive for coming to the Americas when they describe Columbus…Their authors apparently believe that to have America explored and colonized for economic gain is somehow undignified.”(Loewen, 36) This is why the basic history we are taught in schools has become distorted. It is as if those in charge of curriculum, from the writers and publishers of textbooks to school principles and department heads are afraid to teach real history. They seem to fear that if they teach history as it happened, not just the great triumphs but the dark moments also, that children will become disillusioned, and think critically about the nation and society.
One way that we can overcome the fairy tales we have been taught in school is to read history with intentionality. You can do this by reading and doing research with the intent that you are going to discover the truth about what you are reading. This will often include reading one or more reliable sources in depth. The purpose of this sort of intentional reading is not merely to learn more about what you are studying but to understand it better. There is a difference between knowledge and understanding that is crucial to comprehend. When we gain knowledge of something we can recite facts about it, we can spew out interesting points on cue, maybe even teach it to others, but we can’t synthesize it with other information. Understanding is reached when you realize the implications of what you are studying, both to other events and times in history, and to your life. For example, someone with knowledge of the seven years war can tell you that it was waged from 1756 to 1763 and was fought by Britain and France. A person with an understanding can show you its ramification on both the American and French revolutions, and how it restructured political power in Europe forever. The difference between knowledge and understanding could also be called wisdom. Berkerts says, “Wisdom has nothing to do with the organizing of facts—this is basic. Wisdom is seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns.”(75) We fail to teach this wisdom in schools, therefore if people are to gain wisdom for themselves, they must choose to do so. Without wisdom, history can be re-written every time it is told. Personal biases emerge and sensationalism takes hold. Loewen talks about this sensationalism in regards to the ever-present disparity between classes in America. He found that, “Half of the eighteen high school American history textbooks I examined contain no index listing at all for social class…three list middle class, but only to assure students that America is a middle class country.”(Loewen, 206) It is as if textbooks would have students believe that hunger and poverty don’t exist in America. The idea of America as the “land of opportunity” has been a pervasive one in the world for almost two hundred years, drawing countless thousands of immigrants from across the globe. These immigrants came to America looking for land, wealth and happiness and found only poverty and strife. Poverty continues to this day in our inner cities, Native American reservations and rural mountain communities, and is routinely over looked by those in power and citizens at large. The likely reason for this being that we as Americans are trained from a young age by textbooks and the teachers who teach them, to overlook those things in society that make us uncomfortable with our national image. We call it patriotism, but it is really, selective perception. Berkerts expresses concern over this as well, he writes, “The lack of perspective hobbles the mind, leads to suspiciousness and conservatism…After a while the sense of scale is attenuated and a relativism resembling cognitive and moral paralysis may result.”(Berkerts, 73) This is exactly what our history education does to students, it stunts their perspective. As a society we have put red, white and blue blinders on them, encouraging them to see only what is “good” about the nation we have built. This has begun to lead to the moral paralysis that Berkerts writes about. For example, take the Gauntanomo bay prison facility. For just under eight years Americans as a whole have stood by and done nothing while our government illegally detained hundreds of prisoners without just cause or evidence, routinely violating their rights as human beings. Americans stood by and watched this happen, not because we are evil people, but because we have been taught that if America does it, it is probably good. We have a lack of perspective; we do not remember the forced marches of Native Americans away from their homes, or the Japanese internment camps that indefinitely imprisoned American citizens during World War II, for no other reason than their ancestral heritage. If the American people had been encouraged to more deeply understand history as children growing up, it is very likely that the prison would never have stayed open, Americans would have demanded it closed from its beginning.
You cannot truly understand history if you only examine the parts that make you feel good about yourself and your nation. History, like a person is the sum total of all of its parts, not just the good, not just the bad. Choices have been made in history for both good and evil, and through these choices we have a unique window into not only events, but also the human soul. What it means to be human, and what it means to be American are written on the pages of history. So, when we study it, it’s important to see the whole picture, to fully understand what makes us the nation that we are. When we look at ourselves through the mirror of history we may not like what we see, but it is who we are. We will see that we unrightfully enslaved a people, but we also fought, and sacrificed lives to free them. We will see that we dropped a bomb that killed tens of thousands of people but we will also see that we died by the thousands to topple a tyrant, and put an end to the genocide of an entire race. Understanding that America has done wrong, does not make us Un-American, it makes us that much more proud of the incredible force for good that our nation has been, and can be, in the world.
Works Cited
How we read as a society and a culture greatly affects how we study and learn about history. In his Essay “The Owl Has Flown” writer Sven Birkerts takes a close look at how our culture reads. He talks about how our society has moved away from intense reading because of technology and the ready availability of material. He says, “With the proliferation of mechanically produced books and the democratization of education, reading not only spread rapidly, but changed its basic nature.”(Birkerts, 71) The concept of the democratization of education is an interesting one to explore, and ties directly into the modern day perceptions of history. Education today is to a great extent a pedagogy of the masses. No longer do isolated teachers in small schoolhouses relate their knowledge of the world, to small groups of pupils. Today, mighty school corporations educate thousands of children at a time. Curriculum is handed down from an administrator who receives it from other sources. This is one factor that leads to events being misconstrued. It is human nature to change facts or ideas to fit our own interests. People do this every day. Who hasn’t run a stop sign on a rainy day and blamed it on the weather. We immediately seek an outside source upon which to blame our deficiency. We say “Well, the roads were wet and I didn’t think I could stop.” We say this to eliminate the guilt of doing wrong. We conveniently change our perception of the event to feel better, and in doing so, our perception becomes our reality. The same thing occurs on a larger scale in history. The story of Christopher Columbus is one of the best examples. Columbus is portrayed as one of the greatest minds in history, as a man whose courage and spirit of exploration paved the way for the founding of our nation. This depiction of Columbus feels very good. The truth however, is inconvenient; the truth that perhaps he wasn’t as altruistic and noble as some would have us believe. It does not feel good to teach that the driving force behind Columbus’s first and subsequent voyages was not to “prove the world was round”(a fact that was actually well accepted by most scholars of the time.) or any such nonsense, but to secure a tariff free route to the East Indies, thereby becoming very wealthy. In chapter 2 of his book, which specifically talks about Columbus, Loewen writes, “Textbooks downplay the pursuit of wealth as a motive for coming to the Americas when they describe Columbus…Their authors apparently believe that to have America explored and colonized for economic gain is somehow undignified.”(Loewen, 36) This is why the basic history we are taught in schools has become distorted. It is as if those in charge of curriculum, from the writers and publishers of textbooks to school principles and department heads are afraid to teach real history. They seem to fear that if they teach history as it happened, not just the great triumphs but the dark moments also, that children will become disillusioned, and think critically about the nation and society.
One way that we can overcome the fairy tales we have been taught in school is to read history with intentionality. You can do this by reading and doing research with the intent that you are going to discover the truth about what you are reading. This will often include reading one or more reliable sources in depth. The purpose of this sort of intentional reading is not merely to learn more about what you are studying but to understand it better. There is a difference between knowledge and understanding that is crucial to comprehend. When we gain knowledge of something we can recite facts about it, we can spew out interesting points on cue, maybe even teach it to others, but we can’t synthesize it with other information. Understanding is reached when you realize the implications of what you are studying, both to other events and times in history, and to your life. For example, someone with knowledge of the seven years war can tell you that it was waged from 1756 to 1763 and was fought by Britain and France. A person with an understanding can show you its ramification on both the American and French revolutions, and how it restructured political power in Europe forever. The difference between knowledge and understanding could also be called wisdom. Berkerts says, “Wisdom has nothing to do with the organizing of facts—this is basic. Wisdom is seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns.”(75) We fail to teach this wisdom in schools, therefore if people are to gain wisdom for themselves, they must choose to do so. Without wisdom, history can be re-written every time it is told. Personal biases emerge and sensationalism takes hold. Loewen talks about this sensationalism in regards to the ever-present disparity between classes in America. He found that, “Half of the eighteen high school American history textbooks I examined contain no index listing at all for social class…three list middle class, but only to assure students that America is a middle class country.”(Loewen, 206) It is as if textbooks would have students believe that hunger and poverty don’t exist in America. The idea of America as the “land of opportunity” has been a pervasive one in the world for almost two hundred years, drawing countless thousands of immigrants from across the globe. These immigrants came to America looking for land, wealth and happiness and found only poverty and strife. Poverty continues to this day in our inner cities, Native American reservations and rural mountain communities, and is routinely over looked by those in power and citizens at large. The likely reason for this being that we as Americans are trained from a young age by textbooks and the teachers who teach them, to overlook those things in society that make us uncomfortable with our national image. We call it patriotism, but it is really, selective perception. Berkerts expresses concern over this as well, he writes, “The lack of perspective hobbles the mind, leads to suspiciousness and conservatism…After a while the sense of scale is attenuated and a relativism resembling cognitive and moral paralysis may result.”(Berkerts, 73) This is exactly what our history education does to students, it stunts their perspective. As a society we have put red, white and blue blinders on them, encouraging them to see only what is “good” about the nation we have built. This has begun to lead to the moral paralysis that Berkerts writes about. For example, take the Gauntanomo bay prison facility. For just under eight years Americans as a whole have stood by and done nothing while our government illegally detained hundreds of prisoners without just cause or evidence, routinely violating their rights as human beings. Americans stood by and watched this happen, not because we are evil people, but because we have been taught that if America does it, it is probably good. We have a lack of perspective; we do not remember the forced marches of Native Americans away from their homes, or the Japanese internment camps that indefinitely imprisoned American citizens during World War II, for no other reason than their ancestral heritage. If the American people had been encouraged to more deeply understand history as children growing up, it is very likely that the prison would never have stayed open, Americans would have demanded it closed from its beginning.
You cannot truly understand history if you only examine the parts that make you feel good about yourself and your nation. History, like a person is the sum total of all of its parts, not just the good, not just the bad. Choices have been made in history for both good and evil, and through these choices we have a unique window into not only events, but also the human soul. What it means to be human, and what it means to be American are written on the pages of history. So, when we study it, it’s important to see the whole picture, to fully understand what makes us the nation that we are. When we look at ourselves through the mirror of history we may not like what we see, but it is who we are. We will see that we unrightfully enslaved a people, but we also fought, and sacrificed lives to free them. We will see that we dropped a bomb that killed tens of thousands of people but we will also see that we died by the thousands to topple a tyrant, and put an end to the genocide of an entire race. Understanding that America has done wrong, does not make us Un-American, it makes us that much more proud of the incredible force for good that our nation has been, and can be, in the world.
Works Cited
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me. New York: Touchstone, 2007.
Berkerts, Sven. "The Owl Has Flown." Making Sense. Coleman, Bob, et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.pp. 71-76.
Berkerts, Sven. "The Owl Has Flown." Making Sense. Coleman, Bob, et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.pp. 71-76.
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