From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 09:14:13 MDT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: spike66
> Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 1:59 PM
> They do not go far enough. If the US were to lead the
> charge, and encourage other nations to not only remove the
> teaching of history from all school curricula, but in fact
> actively dissuade the teaching of all history, perhaps
> historical conficts would abate. Political history teaches
> students to hate other groups because of historical
> conflicts: the Jew vs the Arab, the Irish vs the English,
> etc. Study of the historical writings of Mohammad are
> dragging us to the brink of World War 4.
>
> Forget history! Forget it! Replace it all with future
> studies. Look forward, not back. Replace all political
> history with technological history, so that students all over
> the world study key technological achievements, and their
> importance to the advancement of mankind.
> Political history as taught in the schools serve only as
> propaganda, for it cannot be presented without a spin of some
> kind. We in the internet age can finally come to the
> realization that *we cannot get at the real truth* about the
> past! No matter what we do. Wars happened. They were
> tragic as all hell. Let us put it all behind us now and work
> together instead of against each other.
>
> Focus instead on new advancements on the horizon. Sever the
> bonds with the past, put all of it behind us and look to the future.
Spike, I wish I was sure you were being tongue-in-cheek here, but I fear
you're not. It's hard for me to even begin criticizing what you've said
here, not least of which because I know you and I don't share a very
large vocabulary for talking about social studies (just as it's
difficult for you to talk to me about engineering, because I don't have
a large enough vocabulary). So, suffice it for me to make an analogy:
You seem to me to be saying that humanity is so mentally ill from its
past that what is required is electroshock treatment so severe that it
induces total amnesia. Do you really mean to advocate such a position?
It reminds me of the Khmer Rouge and their attempt to reset the minds of
their imprisoned population to "the Year Zero".
Yes, there are a lot of painful things in our history and, yes,
unfortunately, most history is taught to most people in the world as a
simple moral narrative to induce allegiance to some creed or party. But
that doesn't mean that a more objective, balanced study of history isn't
possible and that the truths that can be gleaned from such a study
aren't valuable.
Unfortunately, there's no quick or easy path to arriving at the kind of
valuable conclusions one can reach from a study of history and other
"cultural" topics like law and art. And I agree that I don't see any
real progress in the art of historical pedagogy employed to teach
history to people who won't end up being professionals in the
humanities: Quite the contrary, in fact. The unfortunate fact is that
most people will come out of formal education systems in all cultures
with at best a summary caricature of real historical knowledge. And in
this, you may be right: Having such a truncated and ill-formed
conception of history may be worse than having no knowledge at all.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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