Activity #4

After completing the assignment, I now feel that I am very ignorant of other ethnic backgrounds. More to the point, I feel that I am ignorant of the histories of ethnic backgrounds different from mine.

To begin, I found that answering questions about white males was the easiest for me in regards to ethnicity as well as gender. Actually, I think this was the only easy category for me. I think this was the easiest ethnic group for me to answer for because much of my upbringing incorporated the histories of white Americans, white Englishmen, or more briefly white Europeans. For instance, in social studies classrooms my classes focused primarily on the United States’ history and perspectives, especially during the Civil War and the World Wars. And obviously white authority figures generally dominated the previously mentioned eras. Besides, my English classrooms almost never incorporated very little international fiction or creative non-fiction.

It seems clear to me that I better understand the ethnic history of whites because the histories that I was taught in schools emphasized it very much. Thus, even though the history of white ethnicity is easier for me to understand because of the history that I have learned in regards to it, I am equally at a disadvantage when considering the ethnic backgrounds that my courses in school rarely emphasized.

For instance, after the question on the quiz about white males, I found that I had a tougher time with the remaining ethnic backgrounds. I even had a tough time with white females. Once I needed to recall a white female before the 1800s I had a very tough time. I think I had a tough time because white women have historically been a minority to white men. Because of that, I think it is harder to find key white female figures to stand alongside the white male. Thus, I think white females are talked about less, especially in schools, because more influential persons in history are white males and not white females.

Also, I had a tougher time with black males and black females. The former seemed easier for me to answer because of the general inclusion of blacks in sports, but nonetheless, both were much harder for me compared to answering questions about white males. As in the case of white females, I think the ethnic background of black males and black females tend to be spoken about less frequently than white males. For example, when I was in high school, my history teacher spent about one or two days talking about the importance of rock and roll music. But in his discussions he never mentioned the person for who many classic rock fans consider the first rocker of all-time, Robert Johnson, who happened to be black. Thus, when my teacher spoke about Elvis, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan, he skipped over Robert Johnson. I don’t know why exactly this happened, but it seems to me that many people nowadays don’t even know who Robert Johnson was, or even how he influenced music. After all, Elvis is a national figure, but Robert Johnson is nearly unknown. In short, he stands as an illustration of how one example of black history has, in a way, faded away, for no clear reason, in our American culture.

Most of all, however, I found that the remaining ethnic categories were rather impossible for me to answer. I realized that I know next-to-nothing with regards to Latino backgrounds or Asian backgrounds. This makes me think that these groups are rarely studied in America. In fact, when I was in high school, I don’t remember studying important figureheads or events in Latin America or Asia. The latter obviously has to do with my junior high and senior high concentrating on our Nation’s history. I suppose their reasoning stemmed from the fact that the majority of students were Americans. Thus, why not center the curriculum on American history?

But now that I am in college I wish I knew more about ethnic backgrounds that are different than mine. If I knew more about the ethnic backgrounds of people in the Congo, for instance, I could then better understand the writings of Joseph Conrad. If I knew more about the treatment of women before the 1900s, I could better appreciate the importance of Virginia Woolf transforming literature and the role of women in literature during the 1900s. Needles to say, I wish the histories of other ethnic backgrounds were made more accessible when I was in school. Because of that, I feel that much of the world is unknown to me.

Question: Do you think that high school curriculum is too narrow in regards to its historical focus? Why or why not?