the so called subject of history
Throughout my course of education, starting from elementary to high school, history was not my favorite subject. As an Asian American, I had soon realized that history is merely a story told from the winner’s point of view. Although there are facts within the story, most of the other important aspects are missing. The idea that the subject has only put the emphasis on such so called courageous “white” men is simply unforgivable. In other words, there were many elements and especially, many other people that had made tremendous contribution to those historic events. Thus, I am still surprised that not many changes have been made to what we are taught in school. Besides the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I and II, I had not learned much about anything else. The only time that I was taught about women’s movement was about 1920, the year that women had gained the right to vote. Similarly, even if the subject of women’s movement was mentioned, it was not in depth. It was not like we had to memorize the words to the Preamble or the name of each president in the United States.
Furthermore, another aspect about history that really bothers me was the fact that it never talk about other race. For instance, you don’t find that many history books writing about the gold rush and more specifically the barbaric condition that Chinese people had to endure during the building of the transcontinental railroad. Also, history had forgotten to include the many misery and details that the Vietnamese had to suffer through the Vietnam War. We were given only a brief overview as to what happened but not exactly how and why. Sadly, it wasn’t until college that I had decided to learn more by taking classes to focus especially on those subjects.
Thus in conclusion, I strongly believe that changes should be made in the way history is taught. Students should be able to learn about more than one perspective. Likewise, history should be about the exact description of the whole picture rather than the selective part of what had happened. Simply stated, history needs to include women and other races.