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(2017
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2017 (index to #3 samples) #3: Web Highlights |
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Tanner House
10/24/17
Whose America? (Essay 3)
I was immediately drawn to Lauren Weatherly’s essay “Which America do we
Teach?” (2012) as it directly addresses a topic I often find myself thinking
about. I intend to pursue a career in education, and I firmly believe that
discerning the truth of a matter should be one of the primary concerns of
education and educators. But the truth of history is not such a simple matter.
If the idioms are to be believed, then the perspective of history is inherently
corrupted, as the values, perspectives, beliefs and practices of now defunct
civilizations are often discarded in favor of the narrative promoted by the
dominant culture. This phenomenon is problematic, as we begin to lose sight of
the truth of past cultures in favor of the myth of current ones. I learned more
blatantly incorrect things about the native people of the Americas while I was
in public school than I did true things, and this is not an uncommon trend.
This sentiment is reflected in Jill Norris’s essay “Finding the Truth in
Origins” (2012). As Jill put it, “Ask any elementary school student in America
who Christopher Columbus is and they will tell you “he’s the guy that discovered
America, of course!” and even though you know that this is incorrect you nod and
give them a pat on the head anyway because hey-they’re just reciting what they
were taught. But it raises the question of whether it is okay to teach kids such
an embellished version of the true story simply because it’s more “family
friendly”. I know that when I finally learned the true story of Thanksgiving I
had a really hard time accepting it because it just didn’t coincide with the
story that I had grown up with. I couldn’t believe that Christopher Columbus
wasn’t the peaceful hero that I had learned about as a kid and this made me
start to question what other important moments in history that my teachers had
falsified.” Lying underneath Jill’s casual tone and witty response is a very
serious, very concerning problem. Misinformation has been spread to such an
alarming degree that blatantly untrue stories have been normalized in the canon
of American history. The historical record, at least in regard to education, is
more concerned with maintaining a widely consumable narrative than it is with
the truth. This obstruction of truth is not okay. Public education is just lying
at this point, and that does not sit well with students.
Thomas Dion provides something of a response to this argument in his essay “Early
American Literature: “Is this Fiction or Non-fiction?” (2014). Through this
lens, Dion asserts that even though many of the claims and reports made
throughout early American literature are falsified, there is still an inherent
value in studying them anyway. If we read the traditional, normalized narrative
of Columbus as fiction, there are still a number of valuable lessons and
insights which we can draw from it. The falsified information reveals just as
much as the truth might. The very fact that things were omitted is just as
telling as their inclusion.
In each of the indexes for the model assignments of past sections of this
course, you will find at least one essay in which a student discusses the idea
of truth and myth in the American origin story, as well as the idea that we are
teaching a sort of alternate, “family friendly” version of history. This is a
very large conversation that has been happening for some time, and it is
comforting to see so many other students be as concerned about it as I am. Those
who seek the truth should not be the outliers, and it’s nice to have that belief
reaffirmed.
