A Lesson in History....

When I first met my husband, he was studying to become a United States citizen.  He would read for hours, then ask me to quiz him.  To my embarrassment, I didn’t know more than half of the answers.  Twenty years earlier, I experienced a similar sense of shame when I was studying in France.  The teacher was drilling my classmates about intimate historical details and about their country’s predecessors.  I realized that not only did I not know the answers to the immediate questions, but I also didn’t know those types of answers about the history of my birth-nation.

Unfortunately, I am not alone.  With each passing generation, Americans have become less and less aware (or interested) in our historical past.  This is why we find our grandparents and parents reminiscing about past events; but starting with Generation X, this phenomenon began to wan.

But is this, as Ken Burns suggests in his Stanford University address, a result of the spread of social media (Perry, 2016)?  I think not.  The use of social media may perpetuate this issue, but it is not the root cause.  Rather, it is the egocentrism that began to develop when the nation became tired- right after the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement.  People began to “de-focus” their attention on history and generally developed a laisse-faire attitude toward our past.  We started “sugar-coating” events, to make them more digestible for the country’s sensitive youth.  Rather than embracing our history and taking accountability for our actions, we diminished their impact by breaking them down into tiny, disconnected morsels of the original context.  

The shift towards watching television further catapulted this trend, by presenting the negative (and positive) pieces of current events and political happenings into rapid fragments, so that no one would have to process too much information at any given time. 

And while today’s social media may graze upon important issues, these are diluted by the attraction and sensationalism of other, more-trivial and interesting links to data.  For example, it is not uncommon for someone to read about political unrest, while simultaneously wishing their childhood friend happy birthday, as prompted by a Facebook reminder.

If anything, the use of social media may be nudging our society forward, because after thirty years of not devoting attention to critical issues, people are now aware of (and exposed to) current issues.  We might at least comment upon or “share” a story about an issue of national or worldwide concern, whereas before we simply remained passive.

Ask any young French student to tell you about Putin and he will quickly explain.  Ask any young American the same, and he’ll show you how to “Google” it……

References

Perry, D.  (2016).  Ken Burns on how social media gave us Donald Trump and why ‘there is not

yet armed rebellion.  Retrieved from http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2016/06/ken_burns_on_how_social_media.html