Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 17, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists
In Guyana as in most countries, teaching history is essential for the nation, especially for the youths. It has many important benefits. History provides the citizens with identity, improves their decision making and judgment, and helps them to be models of good, responsible and law abiding citizens.
It also teaches people how to learn from the mistakes of the past and from others. It helps the nation to understand change and societal development. History provides us with a context from which to understand ourselves, others and country.
History makes one’s life richer based on the books one reads, the cities one visits or the music one hears. It also broadens one’s outlook by presenting a mixture of races, a mingling of cultures and a spectacular drama of the making of the modern world out of diverse forces. It is of immense value to social scientists who engaged in research.
It preserves the traditional and cultural values of a nation, and serves as a beacon light, guiding society in confronting various crises. History is a bridge connecting the past with the present and pointing to the future.The Spanish essayist and poet George Santayana said: Those who cannot remember the past is condemned to repeat it.
A nation deprived of its history is also a nation deprived of its noble deeds. History makes a nation wiser; it is a search for light on the nature and destiny of man. It provides the only clue to what man has done in the past.
History is important for human self-knowledge in that it allows people to know the past so that they can deal with the present and plan for the future.It is the key to national pride.
Guyana is a developing nation. It gained its independence in 1966 and is about to celebrate its 50th independence anniversary, therefore the nation needs to be aware of the importance of teaching history so as to make all generations know its past in order avoid making the same mistakes.
Teaching history from preschool to tertiary-level education is important, but it is not a simple matter of reading from texts. Rather, there must be a clear philosophical position and a vision of how to teach history in Guyana’s multi-racial society and what needs to be done to achieve this vision.It is important to tote that the majority of the population was born after the country gained its independence, which means that without history, they will not know of past events including the problems associated with colonialism and independence.
Knowing one’s history should be the beginning to fill the gaping void in colonial and early post-colonial education which had left the country and its people disconnected fromtheir past. In essence, colonial education and custom created serious societal divisions in Guyana, ranging from urban versus rural, to class superiority, to color separationand to the racial and political division of the people.
The very colonial education system that caused the division among Guyana’s founding fathers still to some extent exists in the schools today.
Understanding history is critical for students to know that the story of Afro-Guyanese did not begin with enslavement and neither did the history of Indo-Guyanese begin with indentureship. History has taught most Guyanese about the mental and physical cruelty inflicted on slaves and the pauperization of the country by the colonialists.
It has also exposed not only the brutal way the Natives in Guyana were treated, but the fact that in many ways their civilizations and structure of government were deemed more advanced than those of the very people who sought to destroy theirs.
Our streets, places of historical significance and important buildings should all bear the names of those who sacrificed to build our nation. We cannot change the past, but certainly, we can claim victory over the future.The nation should heed this lesson and popularize its own history.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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