Do not always believe  'facts' in history books

A children's picture book about George Washington and his enslaved cooks has, this past week, created a huge outcry in the literary scenes across the USA. The book, titled A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of how Washington's

slaves Hercules and Delia, bake a birthday cake for the former USA president. PHOTOS| COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • Critics who have been up in arms since the book came out, have spoken against the book's illustrations which, they say, incorrectly show the presidents' slaves as happy smiling workers.
  • They have gone ahead to claim that the book misrepresents the institution of slavery by giving a false impression.

A children's picture book about George Washington and his enslaved cooks has, this past week, created a huge outcry in the literary scenes across the USA. The book, titled A Birthday Cake

for George Washington tells the story of how Washington's slaves Hercules and Delia, bake a birthday cake for the former USA president.

Critics who have been up in arms since the book came out, have spoken against the book's illustrations which, they say, incorrectly show the presidents' slaves as happy smiling workers.

They have gone ahead to claim that the book misrepresents the institution of slavery by giving a false impression. Interestingly, the book's publisher has stopped its distribution claiming that the title didn't meet the standard of appropriate presentation of

information to young children.

Misrepresentation and mitigation of historical facts is not something new in the book world. As though subscribing to George Orwell's advice in his book 1984, many governments and ruling regimes have tried to control the future by controlling their past.

They have held back vital information in the name of 'preserving dignity and peace'.

However, in this bid to 'protect' young ones from harsh realities, historians, curriculum developers, governments and writers have ended up twisting historical facts. In the end, instead of protecting the readers, the half-truths have had the undesirable end of

misinforming, misrepresenting and distorting historical facts.

And it is not just in the west.

In August 2015, Taiwanese citizens, led by high school students, held emotional protests over new history textbooks which, students claimed, were meant to brainwash them with china-centric views. The textbook revision was viewed as an ideological

argument for China's reunification policy. One Taiwanese student even committed suicide over the controversy.

Four months later, in December, South Koreans were in the streets protesting their government's plan to write a single history textbook.

The right-winged government, after declaring the existing books biased, had seen it fit to replace all of them with a text it approved. One of the government officials even went public claiming that the textbooks that were in public domain then had some

mistakes and the government would correct them and make accurate textbooks.

Back home, Kenyan writer Shailja Patel in her book Migritude speaks of the omission issue in our school history. In the chapter on history lessons, Patel laments that the history taught in schools is full of gaps.

Just like Patel, I too came to learn of the ugly truths in say, the history of colonisation quite late in life. I read of how the British colonial masters raped and tortured their subjects and was shocked by the revelation which I got, not in school history but in a

book narrated through the eyes of the victims. The text was worlds apart from the flowery history I learnt in GHC at primary level.

In her famous TED talk 'The Danger of a Single Story', Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie rightfully speaks of how children are impressionable and vulnerable in the face of a story. This is true.

However, it is by no means a free ticket for governments and gatekeepers of historical knowledge to whitewash bad leaders' legacies and create saints out of sinners.

One can only hope that, even as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Developers works tirelessly to come up with a new school curriculum, historians will, at last, tell us who the true Mau Mau heroes are.

One hopes, too, that they will openly tell us about the rot that plagues this country, which the late J.M. Kariuki described as a country of 10 millionaires and ten million beggars. May the curriculum developers not, like the librarian at a government institution I

visited recently, answer to my request for material on Mwakenya and the 1982 coup with a surprised "but madam, why are you looking for illegal, banned material in a government institution?"

As though certain parts of history ought to be deleted from our collective memory just because they did not please certain leaders in certain regimes.

 

The writer is a teacher and freelance writer who blogs at www.glominage.wordpress.com.