Your Missing Part of the Story
Story by Aida Zaki, photograph by Aaron Burden
Starting at an early age, we are told a number of stories to fit our imagination. When I was 4 years old, I believed the sky followed me everywhere. My mother told me the sky watched over my safety. Once I reached kindergarten, I learned the sky did not in fact follow me, but our planet rotates. By the time we reach kindergarten, our imagination becomes limited by “facts” to prove a story. However, the stories we are taught are purposefully through the lens of one single perspective. This is the start of our education being manipulated.
Every American student is basically taught the same way. Generation after generation, the system of our education has not evolved in terms of how we teach students content. It's purposely so we forget how our society was formed. By whitewashing everything we do, we can create a new, manufactured concept of “correctness” in our society. Our education system is one example of the effects whitewashing has on youth learning. Because we are taught according to our system, we are “constructively brainwashed” in our perspectives on stories, history, and even life. It becomes a matter of questioning our education system of “what is right” and “who is right” in the sense of how we are taught.
I think about the number of lessons we are taught throughout our education, particularly the great story of “Thanksgiving.” Beginning in kindergarten, we are introduced to “Thanksgiving” with the concept of dressing up in feather hats, showing gratitude and kindness acts, and having big feasts. We are then taught the “history” of how Thanksgiving developed, as pilgrims and Native Americans “came together and feasted.” We are lured into this idea that Thanksgiving is fun and festive as we learn that it derives from acts of kindness creating happy endings.
In middle school, American students are taught that there is so much more than a “feast” to this story. We learn that pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower, “unaware” of other presences on land. These pilgrims inhabited the land until they couldn’t survive and died. Our lesson then shifts towards Native Americans who kindly helped these pilgrims on this new land. The result is a big feast to show thanks for helping them survive. We then end the story with the disappearance of these Native Americans. The story is very well known in American culture, as we were all told similar renditions of the “history” of Thanksgiving. It's worked well because it's missing many parts.
We never questioned the originality of the stories we are taught because our education system pledges to convey “accurate and reliable truth.” Just like in the case of Thanksgiving, the stories we are told within our history are from a one-sided perspective. A perspective meant to benefit one group. It is no surprise that our education was established through the lens of dominance, power and control. With that authoritarianism, there comes the ability to change or rewrite a story best fit. In this case, it is one that best fits the ideologies of white power/control.
This trend extends to stories I’ve heard about other places in the world, too. In elementary school, we are introduced to Africa through stories about the Sahara Desert. Africa is supposedly a big desert where camels lay. This place is treated like one “big country” with a structure lacking modernization and resources. Its people suffer due to the lack of control and order its government provides; so we sympathize for its people. American schooling presents these stories and lessons that create a perspective we think is true. However, it is still one single story. The way we’ve interpreted Africa is solely a misunderstanding due to the whitewashing of our history. What we are told in schools may seem “true” however, it's a perspective from only one side: white history.
The root of our education has been manipulated and restricted to cover up America’s dark history. Our society chooses to leave out information when teaching about historical events, making it challenging for many to open their minds to the sides of America’s story that have been marginalized. It's challenging to open our minds to different sides of America’s story due to the fact that, starting as young as 5 years old, we are introduced to a very structured system. This system supplies knowledge from one side and manipulates our perspectives to believe a single story. The idea of being taught one story/perspective becomes an issue of opening up to new ideas.
While thinking about this topic, I watched a TEDTalk in my class seminar. It introduced, “The danger of a single story.” We can connect this to understand how stereotypes, labels, misunderstandings, and factions emerge in our societies. While watching this video, I wondered how we choose to believe in a single story. What makes a story believable? What makes a story “right”? And why do we listen to a single story? Well from how I think about it, it all roots down to power and control within a society. A form of government, power, authority, etc. becomes the connector of them all. If an individual(s) has enough power and authority, the way we tell stories can be influenced by their agenda. Stories throughout history have become manipulated by interpretation, perception, and perspective all due to power. Because of this, a single story is produced and perpetuated… until we break the cycle.
