Bloodshed. Rape. Torture. Usually, these are themes you'd see in the R-rated Liam Neeson/Sylvester Stallone type movies that, for some reason, get an Oscar nod every February. But surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), these are the recurring themes of Ancient to Modern History, most of which teachers have to convey to their students within a year. Besides the implications of going in unabridged (like my teacher in 9th grade did with the Rwandan Genocide of 1994), these are not things many adults consider "school appropriate". So it's up to the powers that be to devise a way to sneak in as much as possible while censoring most of the bad stuff. Easy, right? Nothing can go wrong...
Yeah, no. That's a horrible idea.
Before I start ranting again, I should explain myself. "Why would you want the children to see gore? Are you saying they should be exposed to...gasp...VIOLENCE?!" My answer to those question is, no, I don't want children to see the gory parts of history; that would be stupid. Their minds need to develop further to accurately understand what history is; it's the story about how we killed and clawed our way to where we are now, with several scars left as visual reminders. What I don't like is when high school and college aged students are coddled like babies and forced to be spoon-fed the "clean" version of history. At a certain point, humans can become capable of handling and dealing with what they can and cannot control; emotions is one of the former. History needs to be taught without any barriers on it, unless you would dance with the notion of having it repeated within the same century. If a person doesn't want to see graphic images and movies showing this violence, they must make their own choice to remove themselves from the situation. It shouldn't become a scary thing the school has to intervene in to make sure everything is family-friendly.
In fact, this censoring of history will lead(and always has led) to adverse affect. Ever heard of the Rape of Nanjing? Neither do most Japanese students, even though it was a war crime committed by their country on China during WWII (that's like saying that slavery never happened in the US). There are still active Holocaust deniers around the world, even though their is proof through pictures and living people that it most certainly happened. Many in the US don't seem to see the difference between a terrorist and a Middle Easterner. This all can stem back to schools not allowing a full understanding of history when they needed to most; had the full affects of these tragedies been dealt with in World History 50 or so years ago, the middle group may not have happened at all. As I formulated on in the post "The Huckleberry Finn Problem", political correctness can also come into play, and it is a form of censorship that is an actual censor on the past. If the world continues in this "safe space" mindset, their will never be a full understanding of our collective past.
You can say all you want that the world has come far in making it safer for kids. What I'm trying to say is that censorship has made the world too safe, in the sense that now young adults must also be protected from their ancestors' decisions, however violent they may have been. Until our world can emotionally mature in this area of teaching, and allow a more open version of World History to its next generation, I predict we will not be safe from more violence for a long time.
-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep
No comments:
Post a Comment