I recently tweeted that we need viable trauma history taught in schools. What do I mean? I mean, as of right now, we aren't teaching about recent historical genocides, ethnic cleansings, or slavery, and exploitation of human beings the right way in schools. We get names and dates and that's usually about it. We don't get a personal or credible narrative of what I want to call 'trauma events'.
Not only are our methods of teaching ineffective in their impact on younger generations, to say the least. Such information on the matter doesn't seem to be building empathy in the students learning about the trauma event.
When I hear folks say:
But it happened a long time ago! It doesn't apply to me!
Or, my personal favorite:
Why can't you get over it?
And, I want to scream at and shake these people. Let me explain why:
A) Trauma events are constantly happening. There is no "But that happened then" or, "Those were different times". No, no, it wasn't. It isn't. Human recorded history likes to put things into timeframes such as eras and periods in order for our brains to process. However, as any history scholar, academic, or hobbyist will tell you, there is nothing new under the sun. History constantly repeats. Certain factors can replay at another place and time.
Here are some of my suggestions and they aren't perfect. I respectfully look for further suggestions or different ideas.
First, let us not assume that we will always have the luxury and privilege to have those who have gone through such events around. Sure, some may still be living, but time, resource, and distance may make it almost impossible to get information from the person or people who have gone through said trauma event.
Also, we need to go back to the training of storytelling statuses such as what bards, griots, and other cultural/academia tellers of old were accorded.
Why do I say this? Because while society must and should give every right for a variety of voices to speak up and speak truths to power, the onus of the retelling of trauma events should not always be expected of those that actually went through them.
Oftentimes, the people who have gone through said trauma event may not be willing to speak about it as they're still hurting and psychological wounds may still be fresh.
This is why I feel it's a privilege and honor when a Holocaust survivor, a Native person who has family remembering the Trail of Tears, or the Black person who has family remembering Slavery, or the Japanese person survivor of Hiroshima/Nagasaki speak on and teach others.
I commend them. I honor them. I weep for them. But at the same time, not everybody is willing to speak on or about such matters, depending on personality, the depth of the trauma, and how much culturally they're given to tell about the event.
However, we still need to be taught these things and so, who should do it? It should be left to those of us who can be objective as well as empathetic to what we are about to impart.
Not only should the storyteller/educator/historian be given the unenviable task to relay trauma events, it should be done with compassion, a sense of responsibility, as well as the scholarly understanding that such events are not so far in the past that they can't or won't happen again.
