Criticizing the past
28/02/16 05:35
Along with a group of colleagues, I recently read Drew G. I. Hart’s book, “Trouble I’ve Seen,” about institutionalized racism, especially the ways in which racialized views continue to hold sway in the contemporary church. The book is well written and offers a perspective that we don’t often consider. Overcoming racism takes more than good will or acceptance of people who are different from ourselves. We need to take a serious look at embedded racism in our institutions, inequality in social systems and the imbalances in prison populations. Hart’s book is an offering by an educated Christian leader who truly loves the church. It is the voice of such a dedicated insider that is very effective in providing the basis for change.
One of the things that a critical view of our culture does is to reveal things about the heroes and leaders of the past that we had failed to see. The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson’s first term as president. That story, however, was not part of my education in the history of American and its leaders. I only came to know about it as an adult. Revelations about colonial era slave holders don’t lessen the contributions of the founders of this nation, but they do reveal that great leaders were also human and subject to human flaws. We’ve made plenty of statues and literally placed them of pedestals, but the truth is that our nation was built by humans who did bad things as well as good things.
Critical thinking demands that we look at history with an open mind and examine our past with a quest for the truth. At the same time it poses dilemmas for institutions that have done a lot of good and yet also have in their past leaders with views that were flawed.
A controversy that has come to the surface in recent months at the University of Oxford in England illustrates our mixed reactions to the leaders of previous generations. Cecil Rhodes is celebrated with statues. Buildings and rooms at the university are named after him. A prestigious scholarship program bears his name. Rhodes was committed to education and did make important contributions to the university system and programs of international study. He also was a proponent of some of the most extreme forms of colonialism that Britain spread around the world. The Rhodes Must Fall movement is a group of people who, after studying the history and Rhodes statements on race have decided that further celebration of Cecil Rhodes is an act of racism. They have asked for the removal of statues and the renaming of buildings.
The decisions about the statues and buildings are complex. First of all, Oxford University isn’t a single entity. Its chancellor doesn’t have unlimited authority. It is a system of 38 individual colleges each with autonomous powers. There is no one centralized authority that can make decisions for all of the colleges. From a university perspective, probably more important than decisions over the placement of statues is the conversation that has inspired students to engage in deep and critical investigations of the history of England and how contemporary attitudes have been shaped by the actions of those who have gone before.
Not all of the discussion is healthy. Back in December, Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African who is working for a master’s degree, was accused of “disgraceful hypocrisy” after revelations that he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. The use of scholarships to promote education of all types of students, including those from Africa leads to wider understanding and a decrease in racism. There may be institutional hypocrisy in the university system, but a single student accepting a scholarship to further his education should not be the subject of attack.
The controversy makes me wonder what practices we currently accept that will be abhorrent to students in a couple of centuries. How will we be judged by those who follow after us. Just as our forebears accepted attitudes towards other races without challenging them, we accept certain practices and ways of life without being critical of every aspect of our society and culture.
Will we be criticized for our part on global warming? Certainly our decisions affect the health of the plane that we will leave to future generations. And some of our consumptive ways will lead to problems and shortages in the future. The rate at which we are consuming fossil fuels will leave different options to future generations than would be the case if we had made different choices.
Perhaps future generations will ask why we didn’t speak out against some of the practices of corporate agriculture. Our demand for abundant food at the lowest possible prices has led to agricultural practices such as factory poultry farms, overuse of chemical fertilizers, and other ways of producing food that are not sustainable over long periods of time. The amount of food waste in our country far exceeds the need for food in parts of the world where there are shortages. Will future generations find our failure to feed the hungry people in the world to be barbaric?
I suspect that future generations will discover much better ways to engage in education than our current system of regimented schedules, long school days and extra-curricular activities that consume all of children’s time leaving virtually no time for free play and creative thinking. We already can see great creativity that comes from those who have not succeeded in traditional learning environments. As a society we allow politicians to attack teachers and blame them for perceived failure of children to learn while we do nothing to explore new ways of teaching and learning. We may discover that there are far better ways of allowing children to learn. Will we be judged for our lack of attention to educational systems and our failure to engage in the reform of our schools?
These are just a few examples. I’m sure it would be easy to compose a list of failings of our culture and our time. I understand the criticism that can be leveled at those who have gone before us, but I suspect that we will fare no better than our forebears if what is expected of us is perfection.
Rather than blame the ills of the present on the decisions of those who lived in times past, perhaps we ought to focus our attention on constructive changes that will lead to a brighter future.
One of the things that a critical view of our culture does is to reveal things about the heroes and leaders of the past that we had failed to see. The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson’s first term as president. That story, however, was not part of my education in the history of American and its leaders. I only came to know about it as an adult. Revelations about colonial era slave holders don’t lessen the contributions of the founders of this nation, but they do reveal that great leaders were also human and subject to human flaws. We’ve made plenty of statues and literally placed them of pedestals, but the truth is that our nation was built by humans who did bad things as well as good things.
Critical thinking demands that we look at history with an open mind and examine our past with a quest for the truth. At the same time it poses dilemmas for institutions that have done a lot of good and yet also have in their past leaders with views that were flawed.
A controversy that has come to the surface in recent months at the University of Oxford in England illustrates our mixed reactions to the leaders of previous generations. Cecil Rhodes is celebrated with statues. Buildings and rooms at the university are named after him. A prestigious scholarship program bears his name. Rhodes was committed to education and did make important contributions to the university system and programs of international study. He also was a proponent of some of the most extreme forms of colonialism that Britain spread around the world. The Rhodes Must Fall movement is a group of people who, after studying the history and Rhodes statements on race have decided that further celebration of Cecil Rhodes is an act of racism. They have asked for the removal of statues and the renaming of buildings.
The decisions about the statues and buildings are complex. First of all, Oxford University isn’t a single entity. Its chancellor doesn’t have unlimited authority. It is a system of 38 individual colleges each with autonomous powers. There is no one centralized authority that can make decisions for all of the colleges. From a university perspective, probably more important than decisions over the placement of statues is the conversation that has inspired students to engage in deep and critical investigations of the history of England and how contemporary attitudes have been shaped by the actions of those who have gone before.
Not all of the discussion is healthy. Back in December, Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African who is working for a master’s degree, was accused of “disgraceful hypocrisy” after revelations that he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. The use of scholarships to promote education of all types of students, including those from Africa leads to wider understanding and a decrease in racism. There may be institutional hypocrisy in the university system, but a single student accepting a scholarship to further his education should not be the subject of attack.
The controversy makes me wonder what practices we currently accept that will be abhorrent to students in a couple of centuries. How will we be judged by those who follow after us. Just as our forebears accepted attitudes towards other races without challenging them, we accept certain practices and ways of life without being critical of every aspect of our society and culture.
Will we be criticized for our part on global warming? Certainly our decisions affect the health of the plane that we will leave to future generations. And some of our consumptive ways will lead to problems and shortages in the future. The rate at which we are consuming fossil fuels will leave different options to future generations than would be the case if we had made different choices.
Perhaps future generations will ask why we didn’t speak out against some of the practices of corporate agriculture. Our demand for abundant food at the lowest possible prices has led to agricultural practices such as factory poultry farms, overuse of chemical fertilizers, and other ways of producing food that are not sustainable over long periods of time. The amount of food waste in our country far exceeds the need for food in parts of the world where there are shortages. Will future generations find our failure to feed the hungry people in the world to be barbaric?
I suspect that future generations will discover much better ways to engage in education than our current system of regimented schedules, long school days and extra-curricular activities that consume all of children’s time leaving virtually no time for free play and creative thinking. We already can see great creativity that comes from those who have not succeeded in traditional learning environments. As a society we allow politicians to attack teachers and blame them for perceived failure of children to learn while we do nothing to explore new ways of teaching and learning. We may discover that there are far better ways of allowing children to learn. Will we be judged for our lack of attention to educational systems and our failure to engage in the reform of our schools?
These are just a few examples. I’m sure it would be easy to compose a list of failings of our culture and our time. I understand the criticism that can be leveled at those who have gone before us, but I suspect that we will fare no better than our forebears if what is expected of us is perfection.
Rather than blame the ills of the present on the decisions of those who lived in times past, perhaps we ought to focus our attention on constructive changes that will lead to a brighter future.