Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 describes a dystopian society that has suppressed literature and censored history, turning its citizens into easily manipulated zombies with no understanding of their country's past or present issues. In the Digital Age where books are easily transferred to the internet and a future like the one Bradbury writes about seems to only be a scary story, one may wonder whether the threat of book burning still applies today. However, seeing as we're still reading this book and others like it today, the answer can assumedly be yes: the threat of book burning is still prevalent; but instead of physically taking up matches and putting them to pages, we see suppression and censorship of history in other, more subtle ways.
In recent years there's been a conservative pushback against more "liberal" teaching--the meaning behind this can be easily explained when examining former President Trump's "Patriotic Education" Commission. The creation of this commission came about as a direct opposition of the "1619 Project," a New York Times installment of rewriting US history through a Critical-Race lens; 1619 is the year the first enslaved African people touched American shores. Instead, Trump proposed what he called the "1776 Commission," which essentially called for curriculum to stop putting an emphasis on how disenfranchisement and slavery affected our institutions and still affect Black people today (Wise 2020). Trump referred to the push of progressive teaching about sensitive topics such as this as "left-wing indoctrination" (Solender 2020). As per usual, his remarks sparked backlash and the phrase "Hitler youth" trended on Twitter after his conference.
It's apparent that Trump and people that share his ideology about education think that a disservice is being done to our youth in regards of how they learn about history today; Trump went so far as to call it "child abuse." But, as we can see due to the trending phrase "Hitler youth," the sentiment of the 1776 Commission resembles historical censorship likened to book burning in WWII Germany to a good portion of our population. So, which side is valid in their concern? Let's look at another example before I delve into answering this question.
Pictured: A Christopher Columbus public statue graffitied in red paint with the words "Stop celebrating genocide" written on it
Pictured: Black Lives Matter Protestors standing in front of a large, graffitied statue of Robert E. Lee.
The two photos above capture a largely controversial movement to take down statues of historical figures that promoted racism and genocide. The reason people want them removed is because they say statues like these represent regressive ideas and shed a positive light on historical figures that negatively impacted the treatment of marginalized people both in the past and present. The opposing side, however, claims that the push to take down monuments like these is effectively erasing history.
Let's consider the latter argument. Is protesting Columbus and Confederate monuments a form of censoring history?
The short answer is: no, it's not.
Looking at Confederate statues specifically, what are they attempting to teach or convey that makes them important to our understanding of history? Most of these statues were constructed either during post reconstruction or in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement--times where race relations were turbulent and White folk felt that the racial hierarchy was being threatened. Constructing statues in public spaces requires power and can influence the public; statues such as the very large one of Lee above glorify the men they're made to resemble and thus the ideologies they stood for. Robert E. Lee wasn't "just" a racist slave-owner that thought Black people were property; he was a patriotic general that fought for what he believed in (though technically the Confederacy was a bunch of traitors, so how patriotic is he really?). In the end, vandalized statues are not akin to burnt books; statues have influence and can teach, but they do not do it unbiasedly. When an idea is given a statue, there is an understanding that the idea should be revered, which influences how we view the past--who is being made into statues?
The "stock stories" (stories that are favored to tell, endorsed by those in power) we're fed about history, I want to argue, are a different form of the book burning Bradbury describes in his book. Where Fahrenheit 451 has firefighters that eradicate our tools of epistemology and history, American society has "patriots" that cloak history with a rose-tinted view.
The Critical Race lens that more teachers are coming to use is an effort to realize that the white picket fence is not a reality and never has been for a large portion of American citizens; whether we want to recognize it or not, race plays a large role in the privileges people are and aren't afforded. This fact has been largely covered up when educating young people for a long time--by only teaching the positives about our nation and glazing over the negatives, generations grow up with a strong sense of pride in their nationality that can make them easily manipulated by the government. How do we get people to willingly volunteer to fight and die in a war they know nothing about? We say they are heroes, we posit that America is so great that their sacrifices are worth it, we send military recruiters to talk to vulnerable high schoolers that have been raised since kindergarten to memorize the Pledge of Allegiance.
Bringing it back to the start of this post, my answer is that we should be more worried about the traditional ways in which we have been teaching history than the ways the liberals might be "indoctrinating" our youth. The youth is already indoctrinated via patriotism/nationalism, the way we censor the "bad parts" of our country and emphasize the good to a point where we consider it a taboo to question the way things are are evident of that. When it comes to dystopian futures such as Bradbury's, we often picture dramatic and exaggerated changes that make them seem purely fictional, but reevaluating systems we have in place right now can open our eyes to the possibility that our reality might be closer to a dystopian society than we originally thought. Reducing or erasing the reality of slavery, genocide, disenfranchisement, etc. from our history under the guise of patriotism is the same as lighting a match.
Sources:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/17/trump-launches-patriotic-education-commission-calls-1619-project-ideological-poison/?sh=450773a4155a
- https://www.npr.org/2020/09/17/914127266/trump-announces-patriotic-education-commission-a-largely-political-move
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSeht9CtM3s&feature=youtu.be
This honestly frustrates me to no end. As a future educator and current student, this concept of indoctrination is one that continues to become more and more present. But what's really interesting is that indoctrination is only seen as an issue when it aligns more with democratic leaning views. How is it okay to teach students false information but not want to call that indoctrination? Honestly, that is just a shameful practice that shows the lack of care or thought that actually goes into the education of our youth. Everything is political, everything is about power whether we want to believe it or not.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was quite interesting to read. I believe we should be taught about the truths of our history. That is without a doubt a given. However, I do not agree that we were taught false information. There is a question at stake here. Do you think it is truly appropriate to teach young children (lets say 1st graders) about genocides and exposing them to death and the harshness of our reality at such a young age? From my experience, as a grew up my school slowly worked us into the reality of our history. What I was taught was never really 'false' information. It was just part of the whole picture. As a child, you do not want to see them hurting. Imagine teaching a classroom full of white children and telling them that their ancestors hurt and killed people. As a child, we are sponges. That would cause children to hate who they are. Just as it would be of the opposite end. What if there is a classroom full of black children, and we told them about their ancestors getting killed. That would cause that classroom of children to hold some form of resentment, which could possibly lead to further division in the future. Does this make any sense?
ReplyDeleteHi Lauren, I agree with you that children shouldn't be exposed to very harsh concepts such as genocide at an early age, at least not in detail. Sensitive topics like this would need to be handled carefully, waiting until they reach more mature ages (middle/high school) before explaining in more detail the gruesome parts of history. I also see where you're coming from about causing children to feel guilty for the things their ancestors did, but teaching through a critical race lens is not about assigning blame. The hope would be that a curriculum is formed that encourages better understanding of the systems in place, not tell white kids that it's their fault things are the way they are. When I wrote this post, I was moreso referring to the way we tend to whitewash history/not teach about the downfalls of the country. Through "patriotic education," we're led to believe that race issues have been resolved, that everyone is equal in the eyes of the state, that certain people such as Columbus or General Lee were heroes, or at least not bad guys. When people who are taught only this grow up, it can be difficult for them to understand complicated race relations, which then makes it difficult for progress to happen. I think it's entirely possible to teach the good and bad about our nation without raising a generation of kids that hate themselves/their country--instead, the goal would be to raise kids that want to make their country better.
DeleteLauren, if I may push back a little bit, I think being sheltered from harsh topics is a luxury unique to white children. Black and other children of color are forced to learn about racism at an early age as a basic survival tactic. Aiyana Jones was only 7 years old when she was shot by police--the average age of a first grader. Various studies (ex. the "Doll test" from the 1940's) also show that children learn to discriminate based on race from a very young age, even as young as 3 years old. So I politely disagree, I think racism and genocide should be among the earliest things we teach our children, and I think we can accomplish this without going into horrific detail while still being honest.
DeleteAs for teaching white children to "hate themselves", I think that's a framing issue. I think learning about race and power should be motivated by love and concern for BIPOC and a desire to embody American ideas about freedom, equality, self-determination, and so on--not self-flagellation for white people.
Kalynn, this post is very thoughtful and important. My mind immediately went to hegemony, especially as you described the discrepancy between "liberal indoctrination" and the call for "patriotic education". It's advantageous to the class in power--the rich white guys, as always--to plant this seed of doubt in our general population that academia is this factory that pumps out liberal ideology (which it is absolutely not, most academic institutions are PWIs and imbued with historically white supremacist practices like the traditional grading scale, according to Asao Inoue), which distracts from who actually holds power and who they are wielding it against.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great subjecto to explore when examining Fahrenheit 451! The book burning in the novel stems from wanting everyone to get along, and I can see how the status quo could be disturbed by introducing a Critical Race lens of education. However, I'm of the opinion that we NEED to disrupt the status quo. Many current systems we have in America are not working, with education and standarized testing being one of them. Education needs to become more of a conversation, turning away from the recitation of facts or pledges. A critical race style of education can include a closer look at some of America's atrocities, especially those against their own people: the trail of tears, internment camps, and how racism festered due to slavery. The presence of books in Fahrenheit's world stands as a threat to the 'peace' (i.e., control) the government and media hold; you make a good case that it feels like an increasingly nationalistic method of teaching would sap free thinking from our standard curriculum, and guide us closer towards recitation instead of free thiking.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you have to say in your post and these acts of justice are often misread as censorship. But this isn't erasing the history that we are taught or know. Just getting rid of a statue does not erase what happened or how it impacted society. It does not erase the first hand experience of citizens and the ways that many are still being treated each and everyday. It simply is a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very well thought out post. It was frustrating to come to college and learn about the things that were left out/written out of history. To learn about Christopher Columbus all through school when October came around, and then to actually learn about him later on made me angry. It is frustrating that we censor history to make it appropriate for school, but is hiding what actually happened appropriate?
ReplyDelete