History gets a bad rap in school. Many of us have memories of history class being taught by rote memorization of facts and dates and names with little or no application to our daily lives. No wonder its considered boring and dull. Anytime we are expected to simply recite and repeat bare data for the sole purpose of passing a test, that information is unlikely to have any lasting change or effect on our lives. In order to use the valuable lessons that history can teach us, it needs to be presented to children (and adults!) in a way that brings it alive and connects to our present day way of life.
How Can History Make a Difference?
History has many valuable lessons for us that can spur us on to greater achievement and accomplishments, but only if we can find a way to teach it to our children in a way that will get them excited and revved up. If a child is taught that the great discoveries and milestones in our history shaped our culture and our world, and that these discoveries were made by ordinary people JUST LIKE THEM, they can be inspired to go and achieve huge milestones and accomplishments of their own.
However, if, as parents, teachers, mentors or role models, we did not have a passion for history ourselves, it becomes nearly impossible to stir up an excitement for it in our children. We have become so accustomed to our world that we take for granted the amazing discoveries and accomplishments of the ordinary people who became extra-ordinary by using and building upon what has already been learned by others. By finding ways to get our children excited about the value of historical information and lessons, we can inspire them to see possibilities for their own future. We need to show our children that history is NOT simply a recitation of the events of the past, but a proving ground for the greatest challenges and accomplishments of the future. We can learn from those who have gone before us and use that knowledge to shape the events that will carry us into the history of the next generation.
Historians have long known and espoused the need to apply the wisdom of the past to the problems of the present in order to change the future. Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the two most influential American historians of the early 20th century, once said, Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time. Because we can more readily relate to the world in which we live than we can to a distant past, we view our history from a perspective that is based on today.
How Can The World Change?
So, how might the world change if we could find a way to instill a love of history into our children when they are in elementary school? If children in third, fourth, fifth grade were able to really connect with some of the ordinary people in history who accomplished extraordinary things, what would they go on to accomplish in their own lives? Here are a few ideas of what could happen:
● If a child learns the history of Marie Curie what might that lead to? When Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered radium, it eventually led to an effective treatment for many types of cancer. Their work and subsequently Madame Curie's own death from aplastic anemia, almost certainly from overexposure to radiation, also led to the discovery that too much radioactive exposure is fatal. We now live in a world where nuclear radiation is a global threat. If a child can learn about chemistry and Marie Curie, then she can learn how to counteract any bio-terrorism or nuclear attack and save millions from certain death and devastation.
● If a child learns the story of George Washington Carver or the history of agriculture, she will learn that the introduction of agriculture was instrumental in civilizations being able to evolve from hunter-gatherers who were constantly on the move in order to feed themselves to becoming more stable and settle in one place. Furthermore, developments in agriculture, allowed individuals and families to produce enough food to feed the entire community, freeing up others to perform other tasks that led to further growth and expansion. They will learn that innovations in agriculture changed the entire economic dynamic of the American south as reliance on cotton was lessened. By learning about crop rotation and hybridization, then she will grow up knowing that there are new techniques and hybrids waiting to be developed and she may finally find a way to feed the starving children of the world.
● If a child learns about the reality of the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews, as well as millions of other Europeans who were determined to be less than desirable by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers and their rampage of hatred across Europe, he can become the political statesman that finds a way to end the genocide that still takes place in this world in many places such as Darfur and Rwanda. The fact that genocide still takes place in our world after the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust is a tragic outcome of what happens when we refuse to learn from history. But it will be a child who has found a passion for history who becomes the individual who finally finds a way to end this kind of calamity and prevent it from being allowed to continue or begin again.
● If a little boy learns about the search for insulin to treat diabetes and discovers that the first insulin was extracted from dogs, he can use the tenacity that was involved to cure Parkinson's disease or spinal cord injuries. By learning about the trials and errors of scientists of the past, especially when times were primitive and tools were crude, that child will learn that there are no boundaries to what we might learn or find or create? In 25 years time, there could be a cure for AIDS, diabetes and cancer. How would our world change if we could find the cures to such devastation?/
● If a child is taught the mathematical genius of men like Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, he can learn that mathematical equations are the basis of all space travel and as he learns about how to apply that knowledge, together with the historical knowledge of astronomy, he could work with other scientists and chemists and discover how to recreate the Earth's atmosphere on another planet or moon and the real possibility of a space community/colony can happen.
● If a child learns the history of the civil rights movement, in a way that shows and creates empathy for the very real feelings of the people that lived and still do live with such terrible injustice and intolerance, cruelty and ignorance, she can learn to find ways to end the rest of the racism in America. The lives of leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. are taught in history classes, but usually not to the depth that can create real change. If a child could be shown the creation of prejudice by a class-based society when he is seven, eight or nine years old, before he has been exposed to a lifetime of bigotry, he could readily accept the faulty thinking involved and prevent it from passing on to his generation.
● If a child learns the truth of wars like Vietnam he could learn that war really doesn't solve a thing. Although we salve our egos with noble causes like ending Communism, ending slavery, ending terroristic rule, most wars are caused by power, hatred, and greed. If a child learns that these are really the reasons that thousands and thousands of soldiers and civilians die, he might learn to live a life free of these crippling, deadly emotions. If all of our children in third, fourth and fifth grade could learn to live without a need for power, a hatred of others and a greed that drives him to do unthinkable things, how might that change our world in 25 years?
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