Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 10)

The living, The Sasha, The Zamani. The African way of life. I love this idea of dividing the deceased into two categories. The living dead. Physically gone but still in the heart of the living. The closest relation I have towards a Sasha would be my grand parents. My mother's grandparents, who have passed away when I was little, are Sasha to me. However, I only remember a little about them for I was very small. My parents sometimes show me video footage of them, where I can recall bits and pieces of the incidents. So perhaps they are closer to Zamani for me. The long gone. 

Humans are not the only ones who become Sasha and Zamani. History itself does as well. I have visited the temple of the "Shinsengumi", located just on the other side of the Nogawa park. They are Zamani, the long gone. But the 9.11 incident in Sasha even for me. I recall when I was in Austria on that faithful day, coming back from school to see the WTC submerge into rubble. However, I do not recall the nuclear bombs dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Berlin Wall coming down. 

Such incidents are Sasha to elderly people, but are Zamani to me. History lessons should teach what is Zamani for the students, not what Zamani is for teachers. As Loewen has written in "Down the Memory Hole", I understand that it is difficult to relay recent history to students without getting people who see such recent history as Sasha upset. But isn't that what history textbooks should be doing? Teaching history is not meant to be easy. Teachers should tiptoe the line of fairness and tell both sides of the story from a third person point of view. Will the students see such lessons as boring? Not if teachers initiate a discussion after on. It is the job of the teacher to present raw information. It is up to the students to make something out of it.