There’s a ton of social and political chatter about what parts of our nation’s history should be kept, removed, focused on, ignored, and why these positions matter.
Personally, I love history (now) – but I haven’t always taken history or its textbooks seriously – for most of my life I just assumed the history I learned was a comprehensive collection of relevant and meaningful topics to provide a holistic perspective of the nation and state’s histories.
Now, I feel history is a critical requirement at national and state levels – we can’t just assume socially, or politically motivated trends should be an uncontested source and voice of what is relevant, meaningful, or important topics for the study of history.
We must see the importance of ensuring we don’t eliminate, candy coat, or make light of relevant, meaningful, or important historical topics – why?
Knowledge of history is sure to bring light to interesting, significant, appropriate, and even ugly historic trends that can easily serve as generational bedrock layers of our critical and collective histories.
Knowledge of history is the best source of what should never be repeated – the absence of history is the absence of critical lesson’s leaned needed to map our paths into the future – altering or tweaking history will always have an underlying motive – knowledge of history will ensure these many motives are transparent and embraced or called out.
Knowledge of history should never be feared or forgotten – every nation, people group, religion, government, war/conflict, social or political trend has critical historical facts which act as our best navigational insight of how to evolve into the future – all nations and peoples make mistakes, errors, or failures – pretending this missteps are not relevant is shortsighted, self-serving, and doomed to generate a negative consequence.
Just about weekly, I come across unique national or state level historical points I had no knowledge of – I’m saddened for the lack of knowledge, but I’m thrilled at the value, and significance gained by leveraging this undisclosed historical knowledge – my perspective is clearer – my personal beliefs or more relevant – my desire for social justice is strengthened – my hope for our nation is boosted – my faith in God and His plan all the peoples of the earth is codified.
This week I learned about George Stinney – recently a court acknowledged the wrongful execution of 14-year-old George Stinney on June 16, 1944 – I challenge you to look into this story – do more than just read the headline – is this just a small irrelevant bump in our collective history? Or is this a critical piece of our ugly history that needs to be learned from – so that we never allow our laws, courts, county/state/national social justice and legal structures to fail it’s citizenship as we evolve forward into our shared history.
14 year old George Stinney – his voice cries out from our collective history for us to do better – to be better – and to learn more from our past.
Kevin's Thoughts 