IN THE BEGINNING
One thing I'm not proud of is the fact that I am not rooted in my history. It's not entirely my fault because I was never taught as a child and that was entirely not my parents fault because they too didn't know much. Although I'm not entirely ignorant of the culture of my mother's people since she was really rooted in it, I am nowhere to be found where my father's people are gathered. Growing up I wasn't interested in learning my father's language, I didn't even want anything to do with my father's people (Not as though I even had the chance to meet them) I heard the language from afar and thought it was not given. One time Urhobo language was added to my school curriculum, and I don't still know how I passed it, but it was for a very short period.
During that period I noticed even the teacher wasn't interested in teaching the language and I wasn't interested in learning it. It's so sad that we use to think speaking the Nigerian Pidgin and speaking our native language was old school because we weren't proud of it and thus were trying to be like the white man. Now I look at it as a symbol of pride because it's part of our heritage when we think about it. Today we see a lot of white people trying to learn our language and it makes me wonder why in the world I wasn't learning it. I come from Isoko North local government area of Delta state Nigeria, something to be proud of, but how can I when I do not know my heritage. We have forgotten about it because we don't even know why we stopped learning it.
Recently I acquired a new phone with great AI features and I told my AI to give me the full history of my father land (Isoko North). I got to learn how my people originated from the old Benin Kingdom and my Clan (Ozoro) was named after the wife of one of the founding fathers of my tribe. I also got to learn that the Isoko people use to be Warriors of the Benin Kingdom, I do not know the reason that made them live but with the little knowledge of my history it's good to know what we stood for from the beginning. So with this I think it's safe to say that one important part of a child's education should be history. If it starts early enough it would be a thing of pride to learn and not something to be ashamed of. I was watching a documentary on how patterns are made, and the speaker said something about how scientists analyzed these patterns using monkeys.
He said seven monkeys were put in a hole and a ladder was Also put in the hole with a bunch of banners on it. When one monkey tried climbing the ladder to get the banners the scientist would pour water on all the other monkeys and then the monkey climbing the ladder would come down. When the monkeys noticed the scientist only poured water on them when one tried climbing the ladder, they would beat up whoever tried climbing the ladder. The scientist removed one of the monkeys and replaced it with a new one who tried climbing and was beaten down, and soon enough all the monkeys were replaced but the pattern of beating whoever tried to climb the ladder remained with no new monkey knowing why the beating started. This is how we become without our history, like zombies who can easily become colonized in the future.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 139 EPISODE 1
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Indeed, I agree with you that "one important part of a child's education is history."
Thanks for sharing this with us
Say wht now? You thought pidgin was old school? I looove pidgin. I can't imagine a universe where it didn't exist. In Ghana here, that's what boysboys like speaking. We speak that over English, unless the setting is official.
I think I stumbled across the monkey experiment. It had something to do with operant conditioning. When I was a teaching assistant for medical students last year, we treated the topic into detail. It's very intriguing what you can do with that knowledge.