Week 3 (Cantu Chapter 2; Loewen Chapter 2)

This week's discussions and readings got me thinking about my role as an educator and what should be included in my curriculum. After reading Loewen's perspective, I started to agree with him that as historical educators, it is our jobs to teach our students the truth... but at what cost will this "truth" have on our students as citizens of the United States? I remember entering into college and having to basically re-learn everything that I had been taught "wrong" in high school and being legitimately disappointed to hear that some of my heroes growing up weren't the people I thought they were. All the individuals that I idolized growing up were slowly being revealed as racists, sexists, lazy swine. It made me question the rest of the subjects I was taught and what those teachers "lied" about too. Therefore, I think there is a line in historical teaching in which teachers do not necessarily have to "lie" about the past, but they do not have to go through all the nitty gritty details about an event either. The men and women who are so-called heroes in history textbooks were not perfect human beings. I think its safe to say that is a universal notion. Yet these individuals are in history textbooks because they accomplished some miraculous feats in their lifetimes. Their stories should be told without also including that they were alcoholics or bigots. Social Studies teachers really only need to include those details if they are important to the event being studied such as Columbus and his so-called "discovery" of America. It is necessary in this instance for students to know that the Native Americans were in America first and that millions died when the Europeans came across the Atlantic. So I suppose it is up to the teacher's discretion as to what nitty gritty details are necessary to include in the curriculum. Is this a fair solution? Are our students being cheated out of something by presenting history this way? In my opinion, sometimes less is more.