A Very Tilted History of South America

This week we were studying the Incas.  There was a line in the book which really caught my attention.  "Because the Incas had not yet invented the wheel, the mountain paths did not have to be very wide."  I thought, "Wait a minute, why can't we flip that around?  Because the mountain paths were not very wide, the wheel would not have been very useful to the Incas."

It makes me laugh when I hear anyone talk about an unbiased view.  Do you have an opinion?  Then you have a bias.  Are you breathing?  Then you have an opinion!   And guess what?  That opinion is based on several prejudices of which you may not even be aware.  We all have basic assumptions given to us by our society, but that is fodder for another blog!  Here, just let me clarify that I am not talking about blatantly prejudiced views but more pervasive tiltings which reflect the culture and motivations of the author.

Incan history is particularly fascinating because there are almost no primary sources.  They apparently hired professional memorizers (South American version of minstrels and town criers?) so they had no need for written history.  Of course, like most history, the memorizers only remembered big events involving important people.  After the Spanish arrived it would have taken some time for the Spanish to learn enough language to engage these memorizers, the few that probably were still alive.  And the Spanish had to justify their treatment of the Incas by demonstrating that these people were primitive and barbaric.  So many filters that the history recorded by the Spanish (the only written history that we have) probably had very little to do with reality.

How many of you have heard the story that the natives, having never seen a horse before, thought that the horse and rider were one creature and were the god incarnate?  This was the popular story told to me as a child in school to explain the rapid conquest of the Incan empire.  In truth, this is highly unlikely.  The Incan Empire rivaled Rome in its sophistication and development.  There was a complex bureaucracy, superb road and infrastructure system.  Huge cities and a population estimated at around 12 million.  Books like to point out that they were technologically backwards, having no wheels, or ships, or writing, or metal tools.  The geography  precluded wheeled transportation.  The only water around was an endless ocean.  They could not see islands on the horizon to indicate that there might be purpose to head out to sea.  I have explained perhaps why they didn't need writing.  Necessity is the driver of invention.  If they didn't have metal tools, then they didn't need them.  They certainly were proficient at working gold and other metals.

These were highly intelligent and advanced people.  They could easily separate a man and a horse.  Most likely their isolation and relatively conflict free lifestyle left them vulnerable both to the Spanish weapons and Spanish germs.   The truth is we will never know and that is something that I love to read in a history text.  How refreshing when the author admits that these are merely probable guesses.  Sometimes we can figure out more using our own brains and relying less on the highly coloured accounts of the conquerors.  

My point is that, in any history, unless you can examine the primary source yourself, there is a  tilt in the account.  This is not a bad thing unless it is not acknowledged.  The first thing we always do when reading a text is figure out the slant of the writer.  What is the purpose of the writer?  What world view or paradigm does the writer hold?  Are there other criteria that might be in play?  For whom is the book written?  By any chance, are the publishers trying to make the "Acceptable Curriculum Resource List"?  :) 

Honour the Parents

All parents know that moment when they realize just how fragile and vulnerable their little new baby is. At that moment they want to do everything to protect the child. We spend an enormous amount of time and energy keeping our babies and children safe. But it is more than this. We also want them to be happy and to avoid the growing pains that we went through ourselves.

But we also have to acknowledge the reality - that, if we want them to thrive in this less than perfect world, we cannot completely shelter them. No matter how much we wish to. Our job as parents, and as teachers, and as role models, is to teach them how to deal with the real world. It is no good to prepare them for an utopia that not only doesn't, but also in all likelihood can't, exist.

No matter when a child is first introduced to the larger society - daycare, playgroup, kindergarten, camp - the parent brings one critically important factor to the experience: the knowledge of the child. No one knows a child better than his parent. To anyone working with that child, that knowledge is priceless. The first insight into the makeup of the child comes from the parent. I have always felt that the first parent-teacher interview of the year should involve the teacher asking questions and the parents revealing their intimate knowledge of the students. Any teacher would benefit from this viewpoint.

Parents are always partners with the other people who help their children learn and grow. Parents should be respected for this and their role acknowledged. Just like we no longer just take the pill that the doctor gives us and stay ignorant about our own health, neither should we completely turn control of our child's education over to teachers and administrators. Yes, they know what is best for the average child, but your child is never average. In fact, the average child does not exist. It is a manifestation created from large amounts of data to provide a program that will suit most children most of the time. I would argue that that is not good enough, nor is it the way to run an education system.

Given the training and experience that good teachers have, they should be able to individually work with the parents for each child. Whenever I carefully express this opinion in the presence of teachers they always reply that there are too many children to do this. And yet, each teacher at the elementary level is only responsible for 30 children. This does not mean that the teacher needs to teach each child individually but that they first learn each child from the parent and from their own testing methods. Then they group the children for each skill at the appropriate level. They supply the tasks and the tools and let the children work it out in their own best way at their own time. With properly expressed expectations and responsibilities, this is not chaos but engaged learning - the only kind of learning that is meaningful.

Ask yourself this question: what lessons do you remember from high school? Why do you remember them? How much do you now consider useless? The curriculum has been put together by professionals who realize all the skills and knowledge that children should have to succeed in the real world. The fact that some of that you found useless is not the fault of the curriculum itself but the manner of the delivery. An unengaged student may learn enough to pass the test but will not learn what they will need to go forward in life. Many of us had to relearn what we were taught because we did not learn it the first time.

I can hear some of you now saying, "But I never needed to know the date of Confederation! I never used trigonometry!" But that is not what you were supposed to learn. Canadian history is not about the date of Confederation but an appreciation of where our country came from and how that affects decisions that are made today. Without this awareness we have no hope of understanding the factors behind the issues of today's politics - Aboriginal claims, French rights, social services, health care. And trigonometry is not about triangles and angles but about precision and multi-step procedures that require intense focus and accuracy. These are valuable skills and are the underlying reason for the curriculum.

So I repeat in conclusion that students must be engaged to learn. Teachers must know their students in order to engage them. And parents are the best source for this information. If teachers wonder why so many parents are not involved in their children's education, the system does not respect the knowledge and value of the parents. Embrace any teacher who does. They are the ones who will best teach your precious child the skills needed to thrive in this world of opportunity.