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History education plays a crucial role in shaping our identity and understanding the world. However, traditional history classes often fail to make history relevant and meaningful to students. Learning about history should go beyond memorizing dates and facts and instead focus on the stories of people and their impact on society. History education should also address important topics like social justice and provide a comprehensive understanding of events like slavery. By learning about history, we can develop empathy, challenge biases, and work towards building a more inclusive and educated society. However, it's important to be aware of how media and public figures can manipulate history to serve their own agendas. We must critically analyze information and seek a broader context to understand the true complexities of historical events. Hello, I'm your host, Katarna Dhamma, an engineering student at the University of Connecticut, and welcome to the podcast, Finding Yourself. In this episode, we will dive deep into how learning about history shapes your identity. Throughout most of our primary and secondary school education, we are forced to sit in a classroom and listen to boring stories about ancient civilizations, wars, and rulers. We are taught these events and stories in a way that seems insignificant, not truly capturing the impact of these lives on the modern world and disconnected from our lives today. But history is more than just dates and facts. It's about people, their stories, and how they shape who we are. Get ready to challenge your perspective and discover the true power of history. History is a crucial part of most schools' curriculum, in the United States and the rest of the world. In most states in the U.S., history is a compulsory lesson for middle and high school students. And for the rest of the world, history is part of the curriculum during some part of their high school education. For all of my middle school and high school education, I took a history class. In middle school, most of these classes were called social studies, where I learned about early American history, the division and unification of Europe, and the colonization of Africa. While at high school, I took AP U.S. Government Politics, UConn EC U.S. History, AP Human Geography, and Modern World History. This is when my interest in history was really piqued, and I found a particular interest in world history, cultures, and languages. I'm also known in my friend groups for knowing the most random things about the most random places, people, and historical events. I also know a lot of flags, cities, and capitals, but that's mainly from just being a soccer fan. So, where does history education get its roots from? So, believe it or not, the origins of the public school system began with the founding fathers. They believed strongly that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues, and would participate in civic life, vote wisely, protect their rights and freedoms, and resist tyrants. Character and virtue were also considered essential to good citizenship, and education was seen as a means to provide moral instructions and build good character. Soon after the American Revolution, early leaders like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams proposed the creation of a more formal and unified system of publicly funded schools. Those early ideas evolved into the public school system we see today. In modern times, history education continues to evolve in response to a changing society. In the era of globalization, history education serves as a bridge between cultures and civilizations, fostering mutual understanding and respect across diverse perspectives. It also empowers students to become informed and active citizens, capable of engaging in a civil discourse, advocating for positive change, and preserving democracy. Ultimately, a strong history education lays the foundation for a more educated and inclusive society, where individuals are equipped to confront the challenges of the present and shape for a better future. Recently in the media, history class has been a big point of discussion, with some states in the US and some prominent Republican politicians pushing to ban critical race theory, an academic concept that states that race is not just a social construct, or limited to individual biases, but is something embedded in legal systems and policies. If you're tired of hearing me talk, I have great news, as today we are joined by Miriam Shabazz, a sophomore studying at the University of Connecticut majoring in nursing. She will be talking about her personal experiences in middle and high school, and how lessons in her history class have shaped her identity. For some more background, Miriam and I have gone to school together for almost our entire lives. So many of these experiences we will be talking about were shared experiences between her and I, and we would have conversations about these topics all the time. That's why I brought Miriam onto this podcast, and it's even more interesting, because while I have always been fascinated by history, Miriam, not exactly. Hello Miriam, thank you for being a guest on my podcast. So the first question we're going to start with is, what classes or topics in history resonated with you the most? The class that resonated with me the most was a course I took in my junior year of high school called social justice, and also my African American and Latinx history class. So do you like history, or did you ever think of doing research on topics they taught us out of class? I would not consider myself someone who likes history that much. I like it to an extent, but I never feel that I relate to history. When we learned about history in school, I felt like I had to sit there and learn about people and dates, but I didn't really know how to relate it to my own life. I just took what they said as the truth, because I expected school to teach me everything I needed to know about history, but I think that after taking my social justice and African American and Latinx history course, I learned that there was a lot of things that I missed out on on my regular classes. Before those classes, my knowledge of history was limited and honestly pretty sugar-coated. So what comes to mind when you say sugar-coated? The main thing that comes to mind is slavery, because in my social justice course, we talked about slavery a lot, especially because that is when the BLM movement was at its peak, and I know that in regular class, they made it seem like slavery and Jim Crow happened so long ago, but come to realize that Rosa Parks died only in 2005, so it didn't really happen that long ago. Of course we were taught that black people were enslaved, but we weren't truly taught the extent of the violence that they endured and how gruesome slavery was. That wasn't represented in my normal history class, so I didn't learn about it until my social justice course. Also in my social justice course, I got to research how they treated children, all of the rape that occurred, and selling people in the markets. The picnics that we know today were actually shows for white people to watch black people getting hung, and just different things like that. So how would you say that learning about these topics has shaped your identity? Learning about history helped me start understanding why people are treated differently based on the color of their skin, gender, ethnicity, or cultural background. Learning about these things are important because they teach us how we can break down systemic racism and ensure that these tragic events in history never happen again for everyone, for anyone. All right, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast. So to bandwagon off this great conversation, it is important to realize the role education, and specifically history education, plays in shaping one's identity. Understanding one's history provides a guide for understanding current events and defining personal values and beliefs. Also, learning about history helps us recognize different groups' diverse experiences and contributions to history, which creates empathy and allows us to appreciate cultural diversity. We can also view learning about history as a means of emancipation, and instead of reducing education to just a teacher lecturing students, education should help foster critical thinking and create democratic citizenship. How do we see media and popular figures today report on current events and perhaps skew history for a certain side? So considering the events that are now unfolding in Gaza, it is important to realize that these events are not new, and the way that these events are being reported on currently is not new as well. In May of 2021, in a BBC interview, an anchor is reporting on the aftermath of a bombardment on Gaza. When reporting on the casualties on the Palestinian and Israeli sides, she says, 212 people, including 61 children, have died in Gaza, while 12 people, including two children, have been killed in Israel. The difference in the wording of killed versus died is subtle but intentional. Israelis are killed while Palestinians just die. And this is very important, especially considering how these two groups are being portrayed in the media. Palestinians are being shown as aggressors, while Israelis are shown as innocents who are defenseless. And this is also important in a wider context, as people who tune into these interviews, who tune into these news media sources, they often do not do outside research or consider the bigger context of the situation. So they will take this information and this subtle but very intentional wording, and they'll take it and think of it as Palestinians are the aggressors in this situation. And more recently, in a New Hampshire town hall, Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate and South Carolina Republican governor, got asked bluntly by a voter, what was the cause of the Civil War? Haley gave a lengthy answer, stating that the cause of the Civil War was disagreements about how the government should run, the freedoms and what people could and cannot do. She was then asked by the voter, what about slavery? To which she responded, what do you want me to say about slavery? This is obviously very important as well, because while this is more recent, it is important to show how even a presidential candidate is able to skew her words and make it seem like stuff in history did not happen. While slavery was just one part of the Civil War, it was a big part. And for her to completely ignore it, especially as a presidential candidate who was in contention to lead our country, is very shocking, as she should know this basic stuff. And if anything, her exclusion of slavery is very intentional, and wants to appeal to her voters who maybe do not share the same views as people who are more aware of why the Civil War happened, or want to deny that that was why the Civil War happened. So in both of these scenarios, big media outlets and public figures are skewing the narrative and are clearly pushing an agenda. This all starts with schools, and how schools and education systems can do a better job of teaching historical events. It is important that schools and education systems take the lead in improving the teaching of historical events. By changing history curricula to be more inclusive, comprehensive, and engaging, schools can lay the foundation for a more informed and enlightened citizenry. Schools need to ensure that their history curricula represents a diverse amount of perspectives and experiences. This means going beyond traditional narratives to include voices and stories that have often been marginalized or put to the back burner. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the podcast, Finding Yourself. Please be sure to like, subscribe, and be on the lookout for our next episode. Thank you.