In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates brings about the notion of teaching only historical stories that bring a positive light to children in order to develop a sense of patriotism (Book II, 377-378). The premise, is to train guardians of a “perfect city.” Though theoretical, and ancient when thought of, Socrates makes a point that can arguably be seen today. In many classrooms through the United States, young children are taught stories of many historical figures, events and groups in only a positive image in order to provide foundation for a sense of patriotic pride in the history of the United States. When Socrates brings up the idea of education censorship, and the government monitoring of historical teaching - current day readers become alarmed. How is this different from some of the ridiculous historical teaching happening in elementary, junior high, high school and even college classrooms across the United States today?
Young children here the wonderful story of Pocahontas saving Captain John Smith. However, when looking at this event historically, there is great skepticism as to whether this actually happened - in fact, John Smith doesn’t even mention the event in the first several writings about his experiences in the New World. Likewise, when watching the classic Disney movie, doesn’t Pocahontas marry John Smith? Not true, she married John Rolfe instead. The marriage mishap is more a fun fact - but the idea that this act of generosity from a Native American maiden never happened is disturbing. Pocahontas is not the only example of early Native American relations with white settlers appearing fonder than it seems. Thanksgiving - the national holiday that everyone celebrates, teaching children how this great nation came together with the cooperation of Native American and Puritan settlers is also under disagreement. The event clearly happened - but it doesn’t appear that it was anywhere near as significant as the legend implies, nor does it appear that the feast was much more than gamey poultry and random fall vegetables and grains.
Cutting to the chase, Thomas Jefferson is an American icon. He is the image of prosperity through hard work, ingenuity and maintaining freedom and justice through all. After all, he wrote the Declaration of Independence - a document with profound impact on justice and liberty for generations of Americans. However, why don’t we teach in our schools that Thomas Jefferson was a major slave holder, along with most of the founding fathers, including George Washington? Why do we hide that Thomas Jefferson had an illegitimate children with one of the slaves working at his plantation? We, as Americans hold our founding fathers in such a positive light, when in fact they were just as human and mistaken in some ways as politicians today. Not to be frivolous with accusations, but Alexander Hamilton was arguably a homosexual. George Washington appeared to have panic attacks and an anxiety disorder. But why don’t we teach our kids this?
Socrates pushes for censorship within teaching in order to create strong future rulers for his ideal city. He argues that by learning about the history of the nation in a positive light, the rulers are going to be that much more motivated to do good for the city, and strive to replicate the positive and iconic lifestyles of the “great” leaders before them. The United States seems to follow this philosophy in some regard. Interestingly enough however, many children are also taught to learn from history’s mistakes in conjunction with false historical teachings. How are young Americans, and the future politicians and leaders of this country suppose to learn from the mistakes of those before them if they never get to study and analyze such mistakes? America is a country that pushes for transparency, but when it means the possibility of looking bad - the jump to cover it up. God forbid the United States identifies the mistakes of its past.
It would be unjust to cover this topic and not mention slavery, racism, the slaughtering and raping of Native Americans among other vicious hate crimes that have occurred in the United State’s past. This is not advocating affirmative action - but instead questioning why the United States needs to cover this up from children and young adults alike. Children are taught that slavery happened, and then some guy named Lincoln wrote some paper and then slavery was over and everything was like they are today. Apparently the one hundred years of racism, lynching and Jim Crow laws never happened.
Is this entire blog just a worthless rant about children in the United States being taught incorrect history. Not entirely, the point here is that often people are alarmed when reading The Republic when Socrates mentions the censorship of learning, and never stop to realize that this is a living concept in the United States. Not only is Socrates relevant to today’s discussion - but a concept that many Americans fear and find disturbing in Socrates’ writing is something that they went through and their children are going through. Quite frankly, the provided list of examples is no where near exhaustive and only designed to reference a few notable issues in American history courses today. Blogs relating Socrates’ philosophical views and relevant situations today will appear over time - as it is important to discover hidden relevance in ancient literature.
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