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 guess I understand a public intellectual to be somebody who moves public discourse forward: someone who either says something new or says something that everybody knows to be true but is afraid to express.
The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
Read. Travel. Read. Ask. Read. Learn. Read. Connect. Read.
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
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