This TED talk was powerful. It warns us of the dangers of stereotyping. Adichie states that the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. I love this. This couldn’t be more true. In this TED Talk, Adichie argues that “when there's only a single story about a group of people, it robs them of their dignity. The single story reduces people, rendering them incomplete, flat, one-dimensional. As a result, it becomes difficult to recognize equal humanity in the characters of a single story.” History education can at times be dehumanizing, rendering the “characters” flat or one dimensional. This depends how history is taught. Over the years, history education has come a long way from merely memorizing facts and dates. In the video, what makes History Usable, the narrator challenges the single story when he had his students examine migration patterns in is home city of Detroit. As his students collected stories, looked for similarities and differences in their research, examined changes in migration patterns, examined and analyzed multiple sources of evidence, they were doing history. Working with primary sources to construct narratives, looking at individual, community, national and global stories, and framing events in different ways allowed them to make sense of the past and present in an effort to anticipate their futures. When teaching history, emphasis should be placed on how historians study, construct and make sense of the past. This is integral in showing students that history is a matter of interpretation. That voice matters. When selecting primary source documents for kids to examine, it’s important to pay attention to multiple perspectives. Race, ethnicity, gender, politics, religion, geography and socio-economic status matter. Empathy and understanding matter. As stated previously, when kids study history and can see themselves in the story, that encourages a sense of belonging. We are all part of a community. We belong to nations, religions, small groups, and professions. We are shaped by our economic conditions, our ethnic background, and our gender. We become better caretakers of our communities when we have diversity of thought. As Adichie states “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.” This is extremely powerful. A teenager living in their world of social media can absolutely relate. Exposing kids to this way of thinking about history and how its constructed will help them make sense of our world. As the narrator of the video stated, history is less about recalling and memorizing facts and is more about discovering and seeing big ideas. As teachers, we need to engage our students, we need to make them feel as though they are seen and heard and that our stories matter. That one story is not the only story.
