If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching kids that they are divided into tribes. And we're failing to teach them that we also, as human beings, share problems that we need to work together with.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of teaching history as a shared human experience rather than as fragmented national narratives.
David Christian's quote critiques the way history is often taught in schools by highlighting the segregative approach of emphasizing national histories over a collective human experience. He argues that framing history in terms of distinct countries and cultures promotes division among students, leading them to see themselves as belonging to separate tribes instead of recognizing their common challenges and shared humanity, which is essential for encouraging collaboration and understanding across cultural divides.
In practice
During a school assembly, this quote can be used to encourage students to think beyond national boundaries and promote unity.
I believe human beings mark a threshold in the development of the planet, of course, but it is only part of the picture. What Big History can do is show us the nature of our complexity and fragility and the dangers that face us, but it can also show us our power, with collective learning.
I had this feeling that, somehow, we ought to be teaching not just the history of particular nations or particular regions, but the history of humanity.
I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.
I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.
Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.
It scares me to think that one day I'm not going to be in school anymore.
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.
The mind of a child is no less vagrant than his steps; it pursues the gossamer and flies from object to object, lawless and unconfined, and it is equally necessary to the development of his frame that his thoughts and his body should be free from fetters.
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