I have long been fascinated by the use of language we humans use to teach what we call history to our school children. As I look back nearly 70 years to when I was first formally introduced to the study of history in the public school systems of Illinois and Oklahoma, I am acutely aware of how much history has changed since I was a young student. My ancient memory tells me that “history” was presented as fact. Often on tests, we would be required to regurgitate the dates, descriptive name, and causes of the various events which was the history of the United States and of the world.
I recall learning that “America” (meaning the United States and not Canada, Mexico or South America) was discovered and inhabited by those escaping the bad people in Europe. Ever since that time we had been protecting the good people and destroying the bad people sometimes requiring us to adopt other lands or countries for their own good. Bad people sometimes tried to take the law into their own land but fortunately there were good people such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Duke, and others who assured that the good people always won. I learned that we sometimes had to fight the bad people in big wars such as world wars.
I did not learn much about my heritage as a Native American (I may only have a small amount of Native Indian blood), about slavery, about the robber barons who became the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Mellons, Fords or others who profited greatly on the labor of others. I did not learn the reason for the birth of the unions or about the attempt of the missionaries and later the United States Government to bring our version of religion and democracy to the heathens or later the infidels. I did not learn that in Alaska the only written history, Totem Poles, were destroyed by the white man or that people were forced to speak English or their mouths were taped shut.
I also do not recall learning such terms as collateral damage, insurgents, embedding, or other euphemisms. In fact I am sure that I was well into my adulthood and graduate school before words such as euphemism entered my vocabulary. I do recall words and terms such as “nigger,” right side of the track, those people, savages and later japs, slant eyes, and gooks.
I did learn that there were people who chose other, wrong, immoral religions, which essentially meant the ones different, than the one to which we paid homage to even though we did not, as a family, attend church. It was later that I would learn about the Japanese internment camps, the fact that the native tribes were just that, native long before we arrived, the brutal treatment of intelligent people with a rich history, that most people outside of the United States saw us as arrogant, violent and disrespectful of anyone who was different. I did not learn that we, as a nation, did not increase the quota of immigrants for any of those who Hitler was determined to exterminate.
I did learn that the Russians were communists and were bad people who might bomb us thus forcing us to have practice surviving a bombing and joining the civil air patrol which looked for enemy planes in the sky.
My history sources were the teacher, the issued history books, family, the radio, and newsreels at the movie theaters. Since we did not have electricity and only occasionally used the car battery to listen to the radio (other than what one could get on the transistor radio), we were pretty dependent on word of mouth or the infrequent viewing of the newsreel at the movie theater. There may have been occasional newsreels at school on shown by a projector which required the threading of movie film.
Much later I would learn about the ruse of what passed for objective history. I would learn that no matter which of us was telling the story we could only tell it from our perspective. The exception was being on a debate team in which one was often required to defend the opposing view. The history that members of indigenous tribes in the United States had a much different history, as did the Africans brought to this country as slaves. I would learn that history changed depending on who was writing or telling the story.
I would learn that I was expected to pretend that such terms as collateral damage, insurgents, infidels, insurgents, and many others were clear when, in fact, I had no idea of what they meant. For better or worse, I was one of those people who admitted to being confused. Most people would and still think I am jesting when I say I do not yet know what many terms means.
Just this morning, I heard that there may have been United States planes piloted by United States service people flying air strikes to drop bombs in the city of Kabul and one of the series of strikes hit a hospital staffed by Doctors Without Borders killing some and injuring at least 37 others (many more were “missing). According to CNN, Yahoo news, NPR, and other news sources an investigation is being conducted to determine if, in fact, the deaths, injuries and damage was collateral damage of air strikes by United States service people who are in Afghanistan as advisors and trainers and not serving in combat roles.
Already I was attempting to figure out how I was going to explain this “history” to my very precocious, six-year-old friend, Sam who was sure to ask the same sort of questions seemingly involuntarily started popping out of my mouth at a very young age. She is going to ask as about collateral damage, insurgents, and eventually how come the United States Government cannot keep even reasonably accurate statistics about how many people we have killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to insure that they were not killed by despotic rulers. She will probably even ask if it is true that we may have killed up to 1 million Iraqi people to get rid of the bad people who were not treating them well. I can also almost promise you, the reader, that she is going to ask about why we think we should help get rid of the President in Syria. Knowing Sam, she might ask her teacher or me if it would be okay if all the people who hate our President got rid of him.
How shall I explain all this to Sam and other kids? Perhaps it would be better if we put more effort into protecting our children from such confusion. Perhaps we could try blocking the Internet or access to books but then, as seems true in many other countries, there are precocious, creative kids who figure out how to override the restriction.
Perhaps we should just outlaw the use of euphemisms. Hummm. …. What might that be like? What if we did not speak with forked tongue? What if we told a different truth with less confusing words?
Fortunately I have many friends who are teachers. I am going to contact them immediately for guidance before Sam comes over.
Written October 3, 2015
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