The best thing we can do is empower our graduates to make strong decisions

During my English department graduation, the keynote speaker –– a high school English teacher who had graduated from UW English some decades before –– did the thing everyone does. She quoted Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," but she insisted that she would rectify all who had done it before; she would do it **correctly**. She would not reiterate the false meaning of the poem assumed by most: to take the "road less traveled." But she would tell us the true meaning: that we will look back at our lives with happiness, whichever road we take.

As David Orr writes in his Paris Review article on the subject, "It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” In psychological terms, Orr is referring to us looking back at our lives with rosey retrospection, creating ideals of our lives and the decisions we make along the way. The two roads were pretty much the same, but we will tell ourselves the one we took was better.

This speech at my graduation, which I actually –– mindbogglingly –– enjoyed at the time, a month later seems less suited for college graduates than it does for someone retiring. It would have better served a senior who feels regretful about their time spent over their years. I, on the other hand, have years of potential to shape the road I want to travel. I don't yet want the comfort of looking back feeling satisfied at the life I lived, one that was just one of many alike paths. I want comfort of knowing I will make strong, well-informed decisions that have power to change the world (or at the very least, the microcosm I live in). 

I really wish instead of telling us how we will be looking at our lives when we are old, the speaker would have told us which road to take now. Even if the roads looked "really about the same" from the viewpoint of the fork, how would we know where these roads would lead  after "it bent in the undergrowth"? Is the point that whatever we do, we'll look back at our lives with a glassy twinkle in our eye and a closed mouth smile on our face? 

When we look at a fork in the road, with two or many paths we could take, life is all potential. Each road, while both look about the same from where we are, will undoubtedly lead us in very diverging directions. They will each lead us to different interactions, unlikely relationships, unique experiences. While neither may be good or bad, they will be markedly dissimilar, and it is worth accepting that there is such thing as choosing wrong. 

This isn't to say that we can't repair the decision that leads us to dark, scary woods or that we can't totally fuck up the decision that leads us to the brisk and sunny mountain peak. Decisions, by no means, are final. But I don't think we should be telling graduates that whichever path they take will lead to contentment, because this is essentially telling us our decision-making is meaningless. If we will be happy regardless –– which, on a separate note, is just not true –– then why put any thought into any decisions at all? That is no life lesson to learn as an emerging adult. 

As I move forward with making my decisions: To move here, or there? To pursue journalism, or academia? To teach at a high school, or a collegiate level? I find myself thinking about this keynote speech: My decisions are not weightless. Each choice requires hours and hours of considering, planning, applying, and this is good. We should be putting much more thought into our decisions than just simply choosing one side of a fork versus another. We should be choosing paths that empower, excite, and enlighten us. 

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On history (again) and also morality and inhumanity

Last week I wrote about the importance of history, that is, the importance of teaching our children true histories. My day today has only further radicalized how I feel about that.

I went today to a #FamiliesBelongTogether rally directly outside of the SeaTac Federal Detention Center. During the entirety of the 3 hour rally, men –– who presumably worked at the center –– stood on top of the jail watching the mass of people below. They listened to us chant. They watched us raise our signs in the air. They stood there, some with binoculars, some with their hands on their hips. I, just one of thousands listening to speakers, stared at them from below for a while, wondering who they were, who they lived with, what type of music they liked. I wondered whether or not a part of them wanted to be on the ground with us. I wondered if there was something in them that envied the the moral freedom of the other side. 

Four men on top of the detention center watching and listening to the rally. While it appeared they worked for and/or at the center, I am unsure what their roles actually were. 

Four men on top of the detention center watching and listening to the rally. While it appeared they worked for and/or at the center, I am unsure what their roles actually were. 

On my way home from the rally, I stood on the link in a car packed with people, listening to a most fitting NPR Code Switch episode, "Immigration Nation." The topic? Why it is the United States has so effectively, for so many generations, been able to exclude and detain immigrants, with no moral internal conflicts.

Shereen Marisol Meraji, Gene Demby, and guests discussed the practice of dehumanization as a tool for committing inhumane actions. When human beings become animals in our minds, they become disposable, irrelevant, inferiorized. They become the squirrel who darted across the road just too quickly for us to slam on our breaks in time. America becomes a food chain in these cases, and at the top are people who are able to see others (now immigrants, but in the past, Native Americans, slaves, Japanese, etc.) as animals and devils in their minds.

This may feel like common knowledge; it may seem obvious. You may even recall a time with you were responsible for dehumanizing someone else, or you may not want to admit it. But I don't believe we are honest enough with ourselves about this.

Sure, the Chinese Exclusion Act was made effective in 1882, but its repeal shows the growth of America! Right? Sure, the United States incarcerated Japanese Americans during WWII, but reparations were distributed to families so all trauma endured is now erased! Right?

Histories have patterns, as I mentioned in my last post, so these events will –– and are –– repeating. But also, cultural memory does not dissipate or disappear. When the United States erases the truth of these histories from books, they can't eliminate it from the DNA of communities effected by these inhumane acts.

Meraji goes on to talk with a professor of philosophy at the University of New England, David Livingstone Smith, who believes dehistoricizing what's happening now is at the core of inhumanity.

"Americans tend to have a rather deformed picture of their own history," Livingstone Smith tells her. "And so we're not so acquainted like the Germans are with the atrocities that, you know, white America has committed. If you're aware of those things, then it might give you pause. I teach a course. It's called Race, Racism and Beyond. And without exception, my students have never heard how bad things were."

I was arrested by this; it was so similar to what I was arguing last week, but this time, I couldn't get the detention center men out of my head. I thought of them again, looking down from above at the rally. Did they know how bad things were? Were they fed an inaccurate, uninformed, and propagandized plate of history their whole lives? Even if they were, even if we all were, does it change the fact they were defending something awful?

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Historically false: How we teach the U.S. narrative might change how our children view this country

When I was a kid, resentment radiated from my skin as I entered history class. History felt... what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah... pointless. History felt pointless! Nobody told me when I started reading "social studies" books in elementary school why social studies, or really history, was important. I was confused –– and honestly bored –– by the idea of memorizing collections of dates, names, and maps, all from the past. History was a subject we were taught –– albeit oftentimes inaccurately –– without any preface as to why these dates, names, and maps mattered.

But about nine or 10 years into learning history in a formal school setting, probably around the time I took AP United States history in 11th grade, I developed an appreciation for the subject. This is when I began to notice the patterns. Something that happened in Europe in the 1600s was happening again in the U.S. in the 1800s; the book was not being redundant, history was simply circling back upon itself. This repeated narrative within these books –– and the weight these historical texts hold –– in our world, country, etc., was beginning to take shape in my mind.

Now, my appreciation for history has morphed into a full-fledged urgent hunger as the critical nature of historical texts lands heavy on the metaphysical shoulders of the U.S. And even more critical at present is the need to police what these historical texts teach: They must not preach propaganda for the U.S. government; they must not create false narratives to zombify American youth into blindly supporting the actions of colonizers. 

As news outlets and those engaging in social media make connections between the present situation in the United States and historical tragedies, the pressing nature of teaching our children history is becoming greater and greater. Our children need to know the history of the United States: They need to hear, read, and watch programs that teach them about the genocide our country is built on. To raise a new generation of children who do not put up with the human rights atrocities being committed by the United States, it is history teachers' (and truly, every citizen's) obligation to unveil the myths that have been taught in public and private institutions since their inception. We must rewrite history as it was meant to be told –– truthfully. 

Donald Tr*mp and his administration are, and have been, forcibly detaining (incarcerating) "illegal" immigrants because, according to them, these people have committed "crimes" against U.S. border law –– which the administration upholds at all costs. For the first month+ this has been happening, at least 2,300 children have been separated from their parents, shipped all over their country without any type of identification which would enable them to ultimately be reconnected with their parents. Trump has scaled back on his measure to separate the children from their parents, but he has failed to implement a system to reunite families.

How will this event go down in history books? Will it be written in plain text that Tr*mp, our 45th President of the United States, is repeating history? Will the text equate this event with another U.S. atrocity, Japanese Internment during WWII? Will this event be referred to as ethnic cleansing? Will it be explicitly stated that Tr*mp's policies were designed to keep brown people out of the United States, and to permanently psychologically damage these people by taking their children away from them, by instilling terror in them?

How history is written matters; how it is written changes the potential of what history can do. More often than not, "fake" news does not come from the media; it comes from the text books our children read in public schools. History books are the OG "fake" news.

Digesting the truth and truly understanding what it means to say #NeverAgain is why history matters. If we tell our kids this, we will be giving them the power to disrupt historical repetition. If our children understand that historical truth is power, then perhaps they won't feel the way I did about history for as many years as I did.

We cannot keep feeding our children watered down –– or in many cases, entirely false –– versions of the truth, because by the time they mature into voting adults, they will not be able to handle the repeated tragedies of the world. This is the value in debunking historical myths, and in learning historical truths, and I wish someone had told me that in 2nd grade. Empathy will be taught through truthful history, not fluff. 

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