A People's History of the United States 1942-Present
John Hope Franklin, my professor at Brooklyn College, introduced me to the scholarship of Henry Steele Commager and, yes, Samuel Eliot Morison, so you can imagine how startled I was when Zinn criticized Morison's history. But as I read further, and understood what Zinn was trying to accomplish, it brought to mind the plot of "Rashomon," a Japanese film that related the story of a crime from the viewpoints of four witnesses -- all different. Which viewpoint was the truth?
Zinn says "I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees…." In other words, Zinn is relating history from the viewpoint of the subjugated, enslaved, and decimated rather than from that of the conquerors, the governments, and the rulers. He makes no apologies for telling their truth because, as he correctly points out, history is biased; it's not that historians are lying, but rather that what one omits or includes constitutes a bias.
In the first chapter, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress," Zinn reshapes our historical perspective according to how the Spanish conquistadores -- Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro -- treated the peoples they conquered. Their murderous brutality is heartbreaking to read, even 500 years later.
But Zinn makes it clear that the subjugated were also, at one time, subjugators. Cortes may have destroyed the Aztecs, but he notes that the Aztecs had done the same to the Mayans, Toltecs and Zapotecs.
Reading Zinn, and adding Kincaid's book, just confirms what I've always believed -- the need for power is in the male DNA and no matter how we try to civilize that necessary half of the human population, we always fail. So I say, "Let's try a noble experiment. Let women rule the world and see if the need to invade and conquer really is only a male trait, or if women have it too, and it just needs the right circumstances for it to develop."
A stray thought comes to mind here. Pinar talks about teaching history using an autobiographical approach and I think that's a wonderful way to teach it. But then how do we apply Zinn's approach? Do we ask the students to talk about their own abuse? My students live with violence every day. Should they be talking about it in class as prelude to a social studies lesson on the cruelty of the Spanish explorers?
Zinn says "I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees…." In other words, Zinn is relating history from the viewpoint of the subjugated, enslaved, and decimated rather than from that of the conquerors, the governments, and the rulers. He makes no apologies for telling their truth because, as he correctly points out, history is biased; it's not that historians are lying, but rather that what one omits or includes constitutes a bias.
In the first chapter, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress," Zinn reshapes our historical perspective according to how the Spanish conquistadores -- Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro -- treated the peoples they conquered. Their murderous brutality is heartbreaking to read, even 500 years later.
But Zinn makes it clear that the subjugated were also, at one time, subjugators. Cortes may have destroyed the Aztecs, but he notes that the Aztecs had done the same to the Mayans, Toltecs and Zapotecs.
Reading Zinn, and adding Kincaid's book, just confirms what I've always believed -- the need for power is in the male DNA and no matter how we try to civilize that necessary half of the human population, we always fail. So I say, "Let's try a noble experiment. Let women rule the world and see if the need to invade and conquer really is only a male trait, or if women have it too, and it just needs the right circumstances for it to develop."
A stray thought comes to mind here. Pinar talks about teaching history using an autobiographical approach and I think that's a wonderful way to teach it. But then how do we apply Zinn's approach? Do we ask the students to talk about their own abuse? My students live with violence every day. Should they be talking about it in class as prelude to a social studies lesson on the cruelty of the Spanish explorers?
posted by book1 | 11:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home