Teaching empathy – not guilt – through history
My eldest child and I watched, in person, as speaker after speaker approached the podium. They asked – even begged – Florida’s Board of Education to rethink and redesign the new state standards for African American history rather than approve them. Speakers who were all shades of skin tone argued against the implementation. Without any response to their audience, the board unanimously approved the curriculum.
By now, this topic and the potential aftereffects have been discussed in articles and on news programs across the country. While I don’t see a point in rehashing it to death, I do want to point out a simple concept that those in the fancy seats seem to have forgotten – if they ever learned it to begin with.
Whenever we - as individuals or through our institutions - downplay or ignore the experiences of another individual or group of people, it dehumanizes those people and makes them “less than.”
To state that some Black people benefitted from slavery is to take away from the experiences of entire generations of Black Americans. As if any skill learned (I believe our governor used the example of blacksmithing) could outweigh the horrors of being stolen from your family and all that is familiar to be bound in chains, forced into a ship like matchsticks in a box, then sold – naked and humiliated – to highest bidder.
And what of the later generations: the children and infants who were born into slavery? Whether these children are the product of two loving parents or the result of rape, they are born as property. They can be – and often were – sold away from those they loved, never to be reunited, and forced to perpetuate the cycle into which they were born.
There is no skill – blacksmithing, cleaning, picking cotton, baking – that can make up for everything else they experienced.
By teaching children that some people may have gained a skill through a lifetime of torture and trauma, our schools are downplaying generations of suffering of enslaved people and making them appear as less. Less important, less deserving, less human.
No, I am not advocating for making children feel bad over something that happened a hundred years ago. No child should be made to be responsible for the crimes of possible ancestors. Any statement that presents that as a goal is ridiculous. Teachers spend their time building kids up through education; not tearing them down.
I am advocating for teaching truth and empathy. Children who can understand the feelings of others are a benefit to our society. NOT the feeling of guilt, but the feeling of concern and care and respect of all other human beings, regardless of how light or dark, tall or short, thin or thick they are. ALL human beings have worth. We need to reinforce this in our schools.
By the time our kids get to middle school, they have been shown that if someone is being hurt or there is a fight, the appropriate response is to whip out their phones and film it for entertainment and to gather likes and followers on social media. The lack of empathy once they reach adulthood (just scroll through Twitter for a few minutes for examples) is staggering.
But, for those in leadership positions who are concerned about causing undo stress, fear, and worry on children through education, try eliminating high stakes testing. That would certainly make the kids – and their voting parents – happy.
