~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Why do we need history in our educational system? Really, why do we need an educational system?
So we don’t act stupid. So we’re not led around by the nose. So we can think for ourselves. And because we live in a constitutional republic of, by and for us, we can be critical of government when it is racist, sexist, greedy and harming us.
If we’re paying attention, we can see clearly that this administration wants us to be stupid. It’s easier to be led if we don‘t understand what’s going on. It’s easier to survive, however, when we can pay attention and “get it” because we’ve been decently educated.
When Trump said, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks,” what did we do? Laugh? Ignore? Agree? Why would he say that anyway? Do you think it had anything to do with his total lack of education? Or of his “education” never being absorbed by him at all?
Because of his obvious racism, in his “1776 Report,” Trump rolled back racial justice in many ways – ceased trainings on systemic racism, abandoned enforcement of civil rights laws on behalf of Blacks and other marginalized groups and encouraged right-wing attacks on equal opportunity initiatives.
HHis current Executive Orders restrict diversity initiatives within the federal government by prohibiting attendance at events based on gender, race or culture. All of these prohibitions negate our history. In other words, our lack of truth about our past is a huge lie that continues to damage the U.S. as it has for 400 years of covering up the enslavement of African Americans.
Well, why not cover it up? Why be so worried about racism in this country?
Writer Matt Robison in a Newsweek article published on April 30 wrote that the current administration “can skate by on the ‘DOPE-ler effect,’ where stupid ideas sound smarter when they come at you fast.” He added that Trump’s goal is to open to debate that two plus two makes five.
Our lack of truth about our history erases the centuries-long White mistreatment of Black people so we don’t have to think about it. Robison’s best line – “Even if we escape becoming a Trumpian autocracy, we may still be sliding toward an American idiocracy.”
We’re not sliding toward it, we’re there; in fact, as long as our history tells lies, we’ll never be free of idiocracy.
Suppressing history is a blatant form of lying that damages everybody – the lied-about, the lied-to and the liar.
If we’re not taught, we are ignorant. And ignorance is not bliss, it is dangerous.
Many of us – a huge number in the South – have never been taught or never agreed to the truth that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws. It is therefore difficult to understand the legacy of economic disparity between Blacks and Whites, or racial bias that Whites don’t even know we have and the resulting social injustice across the board. The wide-open inaccuracy of American history leads to innocence on Whites’ part simply because of ignorance, not intent. It creates total misconceptions of why Blacks are poorer than Whites, why Blacks’ education is a joke compared to White education, why the healthcare of Blacks is either not available or far below what Whites receive.
The February 2024 study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about American education when it comes to our government found that 70 percent of Americans can’t name the three branches of government; one in three don’t even know there are three branches of government; more than half do not know how many representatives we have in Congress or how many judges we have on the Supreme Court. If we don’t even know how we are governed, it is no wonder so many know nothing about Black history and how it compounds the ignorance of Whites?
If we’d been reading 20th century history, we could see clearly that a few Republicans have been working on dumbing us down since Roosevelt happened to mention “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
Plenty of Republicans were against all social justice programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) that President Roosevelt instituted to create paid work for around 12 million Depression-era jobless men and women. He put them to work building roads, schools, libraries, bridges, airports, trails, national park facilities. They were hired to produce art, music and culture for rural America. He added educating 57,000 illiterate workers to read and write. People who were African, American Indian and even female were hired during the Depression. Talk about disrupting centuries-old social norms; the money-conscious Right was aghast at the smashing of tradition.
When FDR said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little,” he who was from the highly privileged class meant what he said. And the Right damned him for turning on his own.
President Truman said, “Without a strong educational system, democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only the key to power, it is the citadel of human freedom.”
President Eisenhower said, “Knowledge – full, unfettered knowledge of its own heritage, of freedom’s enemies, of the whole world of men and ideas – this knowledge is a free people’s surest strength.”
So, here we are, being dumbed down so we will believe all the lies coming out of Right-wing mouths. It means, soon, the demise of a democracy. It’s already initiated a rise in rudeness, meanness, carelessness toward others. A lack of civility goes along with a shuttering of truth – also known as history. Why are people so angry?
We’re scared because we’re ignorant, and when humans are scared, we turn on one another. Our mothers’ admonitions of politeness, kindness, sharing, hello/good-bye/please/thank-you are going, going, gone because we are being taught by example that we might as well try getting away with breaking any rule in the book. Just like the Leader of Lies.
In Anthony Dooer’s book All the Light We Cannot See, a main Resistance character during the Nazi occupation of France said, “Talk reason and sense and literature. Then maybe the insanity of the old man’s war will stop.” It is not hysteria to think that living in an unsure world verging on the dangerous – just like WWII in Europe – is a result of our educational system being dismantled: it might land us in war again.
If we’re neutral and silent because we haven’t been taught the truth, we are doomed. As Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel wrote, “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
