Just a Century Old Fairytale by Emily

Just a Century Old Fairytale by Emily - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

Can you imagine a world where documentation and teaching of the past was simply unheard of? If this was the case, yes, we wouldn't be scarred by the dehumanization of our ancestors at the hands of a powerful hierarchy and patriarchy. We wouldn't have to be force fed that slavery, disease, and failures of the past were actually once very present on the places we stand. We would live in a world where yesterday was forgotten and a century ago was a fairy tale. But, if we forgot yesterday then how would we prepare for tomorrow? If the roles were reversed in the classroom, I would definitely teach U.S. History and/or World History.
All throughout my life I never valued the input of an elder, in relation to our history, like I really should've. I did listen, in fact I was in awe of the tall tales they were allowing my sponges to absorb. But that was the problem, I was interpreting it as a story, something that never happened. I couldn't be intrigued about iconic and horrific things such as the liberty bell, the Declaration of Independence, the roped off land of the Native Americans, the 19th Amendment, and many more artifacts and documents because I never received a first-hand experienced. The rights people didn't have or had were all accompanied by a different point of view that I wasn't hearing as a fact. Just as I'm living and breathing right now, humans hundreds of years ago were doing the same, maybe in the exact same place. I wasn't valuing these classes I was taking and the wise people who were sharing their life journey until my junior year of high school, when I took U.S. History with a dynamic teacher. She brought soldiers in from World War II, made us go around Portland and find significant buildings/places from fifty years ago, presented power points with gruesome pictures and videos, and made us feel the emotions of all different types of people from all different walks of life. This was no longer a tall tale that my grandma sung softly to pass the time, this was the reason things happened, the reason things are still happening.
History shapes our generations to come and influences the decisions we make. Humans who recreate horrific devastation that has occurred in our world are simply not educated on historical events and the affects those events had on every single human being. Not just United States History, but World History should be presented in our schools as current events, something that people from all ages should pay close attention to. This is why I would, without a doubt, teach history if the classroom roles were reversed. Because, History is not just a century old fairytale.