What Facing HIstory Meant to Me

This course was very eye opening for me. In this class I really learned a great deal about historical events but also quite a bit about human nature. It is my belief after having taken this course that people in general are easy to manipulate. This manipulation comes when people trust their intellectual superiors to give them the facts. If nothing else this course has taught me to be vigilant and to always be looking for manipulation of facts. It has taught me to always check many sources. And more then anything else Facing History and Ourselves has shown me that it is vital to think for myself. After completing this class I believe that I have benefited as a student, because now I will question more. I have benefited as a person because I am simply more aware of constant manipulation.

It is often difficult for people to stand up to someone who they believe is more educated than they are. Students especially look up to their instructors to tell them what is right and what is wrong. It is easy for students to blindly believe what they are being taught. This class has made me a better student because it has taught me to not just believe what a teacher tells me is the truth. It is easier to simply buy whatever it is the teacher says it the truth however, it can be dangerous and hurtful. In Nazi Germany, as we discussed in class, teachers would teach propaganda. The young students, not knowing any better believed every word of it. In Reading 15 we read about what Gregor Ziemer observed while watching a German class. The teacher told the students blatant lies including that the leader of America, Roosevelt’s real name was Rosenfeldt, which showed that he was a Jew. The entire class that was taught that day was all propaganda designed to teach the young students that they were superior to Jews. They were also taught that Germany was superior and that America was actually going down hill. Now these students were young but the propaganda that they were being taught to believe was being taught to everyone. The people in Germany had no reason to believe that they were being lied to. The people telling them these facts were intellectually their superiors and doctors. These people were armed with ‘facts’ and ‘science’ Samuel Morton and Herbert Spencer gave them ‘proof’ that Aryans were genetically superior to all other races. So the people did not question them. What this course has taught me more than anything else is to not to blindly trust what I am told. Facts can be twisted to make them seem different than they are. This class has made me aware of my responsibility to verify facts and to find the truth. It is my responsibility to find the facts and to think for myself. If something does not sound right, it probably is not. This class has made me aware of my duty to find and understand the truth, thus making me a better person and a better student of history.

Another way that this class has made me a better person is by putting allowing me to know what it is like to be in another person’s place. It has made me at least think much more about how it would feel to be in another person’s shoes. One video really stood out to me the most was the video about the third grade class. The teacher of this class did an experiment on discrimination. The experiment put half of the class above the other half. The next day their positions were switched. It showed me how easy it is to fall into a pattern of cruelty especially when it is not aimed at you. Watching this video had a huge influence on me. These kids were friends when they walked into their classroom that day. However, they were turned on each other very easily, by lunch they were fighting with each other. I got two things out of this video. The first is how painful it is when you are discriminated against. The second thing is that you should really step back before you discriminate against someone. Watching these little kids turn on each other was very powerful for me. It has made me much more aware of my place and what I should and should not say as both a person and a student.

The reason that the things involving children were so powerful for me was because I intend to be a teacher. Even more importantly I plan to be a History teacher. For this reason this class has had a huge influence on me because I believe that I can pass on some of the lessons I have learned to my future students. I will be able to explain that to understand history you have to not only know all the facts but you have to place yourself in that moment in time. You have to understand the people who are acting and the situation they were in. I will be able to teach them the importance of stepping back and learning what really happened before judging. This is because I have learned to try to do this by in my own life.

From this course I have realized that it is very easy to manipulate people, especially young people. It is important that they be given facts to work with and only facts. It will be my job to insure that I am giving my students just the facts, the correct facts of course and then allow them to draw their own conclusions. I also think that it is important to teach them important lessons that will carry out through out their lives. I have learned lessons in Facing History and Ourselves that I think I will carry with me and that have made me a better person. I would like to be able to teach my future students some of the lessons that I have learned through this course and to at least make them relevant to what we I am teaching.