Reflecting on History

I always thought that history was one of those courses that was a last minute add-on to the curriculum that just stuck. It’s great non-fiction, for the most part. But now, I’m doing a correspondence with a Grade 3 teacher from back home about Korea as a country and its population.  How it worked was the students came up with questions and sent them to me for an answer. I was actually really upset about how little I knew and also how much I rely on Wikipedia for basic things I’ve forgotten or never bothered to find out.

Reading questions such as:

What trees grow there?

What’s Korea’s national animal?

How many statues are there in Korea? (This answer is up in the millions but I don’t know what a single one is called or what it honors apart from Buddha.)

What are some popular drinks? (Instantly Soju popped into my brain but I don’t think that’s approp for grade 3)

What types of animals live in Korea and what’s your favourite?  (There’s a bird that reminds me of a Mockingjay from The Hunger Games but I don’t know the name of it and spent a frustrating fifteen minutes scouring the internet for “black and white bird names”)

I guess I’ve become intimidated in regards to asking questions about things I feel people my age should already know, or don’t need to know. The latter is kind of embarrassing as a society, we should always be trying to better ourselves and what better way than to improve our knowledge or diction even if it only comes in handy for one question on trivia night, ever. We learn these things from all the voices around us. That’s how I know what it is to be Canadian. History shapes mentality and mottoes: “do whaddya gotta do” “eat or be eaten” “whenever you puke on your shirt put $50 in the front pocket of your suit.”

I look at some of the kids I taught during placement who were African-Canadian, Indian and Somalian and there a different set of values because it correlates to their history and lifestyle model. I look back and I bet I couldn’t, still can’t actually, name 30% of all the countries in the world and these kids could; maybe, its travelling prior to arriving here or maybe it’s the stigma that their parents have pinned to neighbors, teachers, and realtors from different countries that we generally label as The Middle East and Africa. This behaviour is exactly how my grandfather was when he was alive telling my younger cousin not to wear his hat a certain way because that’s how black people wear it, too bad they were Indian.

Learning your history is gateway into sociology and vice versa. Without it there’s no sense of identity in a country: (preach time) you won’t know what your ancestors fought for, you won’t know why healthcare is free, you won’t know your national animal and you even won’t know why it’s your national animal. You’d have to rely on the fisherman’s tales of your ancestors. As much as I like those stories I don’t think they’re anything to build an identity around.

Go out and Learn about stuff it’s never too late!