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.
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
'Good English' is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.
I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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