Teaching the Truth
I read a History is Elementary post a few weeks ago, and it’s still running through my head. Darwin’s birthday last week reminded me of what is taught in schools (evolution vs. intelligent design, etc.) and how parental beliefs can sometimes differ from what the educators are teaching the students.
In her post, Elementary Historyteacher writes about being a history teacher in Georgia, and how every school year she comes up against the fact that the black parents and the white parents have very different perspectives on the Civil War, and both groups are very clear about the fact that they want her to teach the Civil War curriculum according to their own beliefs.
I’ve written here before regarding the yearly pattern of Open House at the beginning of the year when I inevitably have white parents wanting to know if I teach the truth about the Civil War, and I have just as many black parents wanting to know the same thing.
Basically they want to know if I’m going to teach their children whatever it is that they believe regardless of the truth.
How do teachers deal with finding the middle line of truth that’s running through fomenting topics like evolution or the Civil War? Each side believes that their version is the real and true one. I was already in awe of people who choose to spend their days explaining the world to kids for meager monetary compensation, but pondering impossible tasks like teaching inflammatory subject matter has brought my respect and appreciation to a whole new level.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
One of the results of homo sapiens spending almost all their time as a species as hunter-gatherers is that history is what we tell our children. This is ingrained in out social fabric and perhaps in our genetic fabric. And when we develop a society where telling history is an organization responsibility separate from the parents, we still want it to be what we would have told.
But it does give one a great respect for what Thucydides accomplished.