The Facing History and Ourselves course had a great effect on the way that I think and the things that I do. This class was always more then just a part of my schedule at school. I have learned so much about tolerance and acceptance of other people in this class and that has transferred into my everyday life. I am not so quick to judge people by their appearance or by my first impression of them. I understand now that everybody has a story that makes them who they are and nobody’s story or background is better than anybody else’s. I think that this will especially help me next year in college when I meet many different people. I think that I am more worldly and knowledgeable because of this course, and this will definitely make me a better person in the long run.
The first portion of the course was dedicated to understanding how genocide is possible and why the people in our history were able to do the bad things that they did. We learned about a genocide called the Armenian genocide, and I had never heard of it before. It seemed strange to me that I had never known about it, because so many Armenians were murdered in this tragedy. We were lucky enough to hear the personal story of what an Armenian ministers family went through during the genocide. Hearing this man tell us his story in person greatly increased the effect that he had on us. I think that everything becomes more real when stories are told by people who experienced the event first hand. When I read about historic events in a text book the facts are just numbers and statistics to me. Death toll numbers in text books don’t mean anything to me until I can put a face of a real person to the event. The Armenian genocide was a tragedy that the whole world needs to know about and acknowledge as a real historic event. We owe at least that much to the poor humans who were brutally and unrightfully slaughtered.
One main idea of the course is the importance of identity. On the first day of class Mr. Gallagher asked us the question, “What is the single most important possession that you have?” When it was my turn to answer I told him that I thought my name was my most important possession. He really like that answer and we continued to discuss just how important everybody’s name is to them. A persons name is often times what defines them. We use our manes to communicate, to tie ourselves back to our families, and for many other things. Without the identification of our names surviving in human society would be very difficult. This course has taught me that it is important to be proud of who I am and where I come from because it is different than everybody else in the world. Being unique is what makes our lives meaningful. Another thing that this part of the course has helped me to do is become more interested in my family members’ life stories. All of a sudden I am so much more interested in what their lives were like before I knew them. Everybody’s past is what makes up the history of the world. Knowing this gives the individual more confidence and power because it ensures that individuals do make a difference, and can alter the way the world works out.
We focused on the idea of discrimination a lot during the course. We studied about how many different types of people were judged because of their appearance or religion. One activity that I think was very interesting and helped me to understand discrimination better is when we learned about Ms. Elliot and her experiment. Ms. Elliot was the teacher of a third grade class when Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated. One of the students asked her why that happened and she decided that it was a good opportunity to teach the children about what it is like to be discriminated against. She split the class up according to the color of their eyes. One day she made the Blue eyes superior to the brown eyes, and the next day she made the brown eyes superior to the blue eyes. It was remarkable to see the change in the children once they realized that they were the ones in charge and could order the other ones around. The children went from being friends to hostile enemies in a matter of minutes quite frankly. This was a very controversial activity, and there were many consequences to her actions, but Ms. Elliot had a life long lasting impression on all of the kids that she did the activity with. After many years had passed, the kids (now adults) met with Ms. Elliot again to talk about the effect that the activity had on them. All of them said that they think all students should experience the activity because it changed their life.
All of the things that we learned were leading up to the holocaust. This was the most powerful unit of the course and it really opened my eyes to what really happened in the horrible part of our world’s history. We started out learning about the events that lead up to World War II and the rise of Hitler.
It was important for us to understand how it was possible for such a person to gain complete control of Germany. None of the horrible things that happened during this time could have happened without the whole population of the nation letting it happen. Hitler convinced his nation that the Jews were to blame for the loss of the First World War, and this is what helped his mass murder plan to work. We watched a lot of stunning footage of death camps and what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. Some of the movies that we watched were hard but important to see. I am really glad that I took this course because it has changed my life for the better. I honestly think that I am a better person after taking this class.
