Rewriting History

Unhappy with a past indiscretion? Said something inappropriate? Flunked a test? Forgot a birthday? Act as though it never happened.

Paid a bill late? Ignore the late fee.

Struck out a bat? Turn it into a home run.

Just rewrite history and poof, it’s gone. Or changed into something more tolerable.
Why deal with our past issues when we can excuse, ignore or alter the circumstances under which they occurred?

But in the real world, consequences can’t just be relegated to a fantasy world.

Hard to imagine a society that would condone such action. But now some states want to embrace just that.

If it bothers you to hear something, then just don’t teach it. Is the mass murder of six million Jews and over 12 million in World War Two too upsetting to hear? Don’t teach it.

Does the enslavement of an entire race of people in order to make another race prosper and grow in a budding new country upset you? Then teach it had a minimal impact at best to those claiming harm.

Don’t like the idea of our forefathers wanting freedom of speech in all forms, including separation of church and state? Claim that premise is untrue and promote the opposite.

Rewriting history isn’t new.

Those in charge have always known it was one of the perks that came with power and control.

As Hitler once said, “Give me your kids and in ten years I’ll change society.” A frightening but true reality.

Now it appears two state governors are doing everything in their power to dictate what schools can teach to achieve the same ends.

In Texas one district directs, “teachers and administrators shall not instruct employees or students that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethics are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race or group to oppress members of another race or group”

Or,

“That the advent of slavery in the territories that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States nor shall teachers instruct them with respect to the relationship to American values that slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from the trails of our failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States”.

“Our goal is to spread this to the rest of Texas and the entire United States”.

The Texas school board decided to have Anne Frank- the little girl who detailed in a diary the devastating months her family hid in an attic before being found and sent to die in a concentration camp -as well as books relating to race and sexuality removed from library shelves because they were deemed “inappropriate.”

They force children to prove their biological gender on their birth certificate before entering a bathroom or locker room.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis is actively changing how schools teach in Florida’s “new civics standards.”

According to Barbara Segal, a high school government teacher in Fort Lauderdale, who recently took a three-day training session on Florida’s new civics standards,

“In the training materials, slides said it was a ‘misconception’ that the Founding Fathers wanted strict separation of church and state and that they in fact wanted religion to be promoted.”

“Some of the most jarring material seemed to downplay the role of slavery in the country’s founding, including one that stated that only 4 percent of enslaved people from Africa came to the colonies.”

Many of the classes altered or eliminated were established to teach students how our lives have been impacted by social networks, legal dogma, politics, and the media. And how these perceptions shape the way we are seen as individuals and how we see ourselves and our place in the world. It wasn’t meant to attack or place blame but to allow an honest discourse on how past injustices have created today’s inequalities.

Like it or not, history is filled with facts and actions that do not present our country in the best light.

Women were property until the early 1900’s.

Children worked in sweat shops.

Native Americans were killed or rounded up and put on reservations.

Separate but equal was supported by the Supreme Court legally, approving a means to diminish an entire group of people.

Running to back alleys or using hangars for barbaric abortions before Roe v. Wade. And now 50 years later, young women’s lives are threatened over the right to control their bodies.

Japanese Americans put in camps when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Law enforcement began as “slave patrols” meant to squash uprising and return slaves to their owners.

Too many examples to document here.

All deserve an honest and open evaluation of how they affected lives and the paths they took us down. Without that introspection we are doomed to continue the cycle of injustice and heartache. It’s the only way we can move forward and succeed in making the brilliant dream of forming a more perfect nation with freedom for all, possible.

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