Is history important in this day and age? Well, I think this is quite debatable as it depends exactly on what part of history is being told. Many times, people prefer to tell their history only in a way that shows themselves in good light, it’s rare for people to tell you the downsides of their history. As a result, these one-sided stories will always end up being the reason why many people will keep making the mistakes that their ancestors did.
Now, if we forget technology and the like, have we come any far as a people? Even though we know the dangers and costs of war, countries are still going to war against each other. Despite how bad things were in the past, there are still gender issues with regard to where women can work and how they can earn. We still have racism and tribalism, and we still have religious tensions… all these are happening, even though we all know clearly that they’ve all happened in the past and they didn’t end well for anyone.
So, will teaching history in schools be any better? Nah… I really don’t think so. The truth is, the only place you can get the real history will be from people that it actually happened to. Not the school, and definitely not the government. The school works under the government, be they public or private schools. If they’re teaching history, you can very well know that it will be the form of history that puts them in a good light, not the other way around. A leader won’t want his people to learn about how neglected his duties and caused an entire village to be massacred. Instead, he would focus the story on how he was able to destroy the attackers, conveniently leaving out the part that if he hadn’t been neglectful of his duties, things wouldn’t have gotten so bad to begin with.
Going to school, we were never taught history. As a matter of fact, the closest I ever got to learning some history was during Yoruba language classes. History wasn’t in the curriculum, but we had a great teacher then who would always find a way to infuse Yoruba history in whatever we were learning that day. For her, it wasn’t just about learning the Yoruba alphabet and knowing how to construct grammar, it was so much more and it made us enjoy it a lot that year.
Well, that was my only experience with history. Since then, the only other thing I’ve learned about history has been on my own. I either had to ask people or I had to run my own research. It can be quite frustrating when you want to learn more about your people or your ancestors but you can’t. Imagine not knowing what your tribe was like a hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago… or a thousand years ago. After all, we didn’t fall from the sky, generations have passed down and stories have been passed down with them. Sadly, we never really had a good system to record our stories.
It would be great if people could begin to take a more active interest in history. Let’s do the little that we can to record our history so that future generations will have something to hold onto. There are already books about historical events, we need more of them! We need more movies and we need more sites that people can visit to learn more about our past. We need more of these!!!
All this is good… but teaching history in schools? Nah… I think I’ll pass. I don’t trust the government to tell us the real truth, and the school can only teach what the government permits unless they are shut down. So, I guess the future of history rests on our shoulders. If we really want generations to come to know all about our past, now is the time to start recording and setting the system. Now is the time to start telling our story. We do it ourselves and not wait for the government.
After all, if we don’t tell our stories, who will?
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