It is pretty impressive how many different ways I’ve come to learn about the creation of this country – or shall I say, Land O’ Freedom – the United States of America. While consistently learning about the same time period and group of people may sound boring, rest assured there are some benefits to this. After all, keeping an open mind to education is the way to go as with all things, right America?
1. 240 Years’ Worth of In-Depth Studies
Being born in 1776 means the United States has a whopping 240 years of legitimate history. Rather than having to worry about thousands of years of history behind countries such as China or Egypt, all there is to worry about is after 1776. With a comparatively smaller life, students can really dig into the vibrant history that America is founded on.
2. The White Way to Study
Oops, **Right. Something else I’ve found myself thankful for is that for every fifty years of history I only have to learn about one extra person outside of the fantastic founding fathers group. Luckily, out of the millions of slaves I only had to be concerned with a few and even fewer of the thousands of slaughtered Native Americans. Focused area of study, easy study time.
3. Euphemistic Word Choice
Naturally, after reading a variety of “American” history books I noticed that many of them used very pleasant phrases and word choices. It truly made the learning process easier for other students and I. I’ll give a few examples. Instead of describing the brutal, inhumane ways both enslaved and freed blacks were punished for nonexistent crimes some common words were “tortured”, “beaten”, and several others. Crazy how all the creative ways people used to kill and injure blacks can be condensed into a few sentences or words. Saves room for the entire chapters needed to explain the signing of a piece of a paper.
4. Predictable Inventors
As this country was starting to flourish, there were an innumerable amount of inventions being created and built upon. Had to study who invented these things? Easy. Guess the name of a white, slightly older male and nine times out of ten you’d be right (according to what I’ve learned from my teachers and assigned textbooks). Sure, Frederick McKinley had over sixty inventions and Granville Woods invented a revolutionary form of the telegraph to save lives from railway accidents. But were they white? I didn’t think so.
5. No Room for Complaints
At the end of the day, if our history isn’t studied (I’m speaking to all communities not properly represented in traditional American history lessons) we won’t know what we could possibly “complain” about. After all, who would we be to voice our opinions on something we don’t know? …I’ll leave this for someone else to answer.
History is a powerful tool and can be used for a multitude of things, such as avoiding past gruesome mistakes. This is why it is important to find the people, the resources to look into the real story. Not what many education systems in America want to spoon feed their students. It should be a known fact that while this country is indeed a land of (sometimes) equal opportunities and freedoms, it is not built upon the romantic tales of perseverance starring our founding father. Fun Fact: Abraham Lincoln wasn’t as dead-set on freeing the slaves as many people have been made to believe.
American history isn’t some fairy tale.
