History has always been my greatest interest
Author was accepted to Cornell+Columbia+UPenn Universities
History has always been my greatest interest, yet through my years of learning I have come to understand that teaching history is anything but an easy job. My years of suspicion were confirmed in the first class of my history tutorship. With students resting their chins on one hand like a half-hung telephone and staring at me with blank, unfocused eyes, I knew I had to figure out some way to grab their attention. I returned home that evening with the best intentions, yet after I opened up my fifth blank Microsoft file in a state of pure frustration, my concentration and confidence faded. It seemed strange that even though I was surrounded by various historical artifacts in my father’s library, I was unable to garner inspiration from such an ambience. I was like a waif lost in the crowd until I noticed a thick, familiar album that whisked me into a remembrance of the days my father and I used to spend pouring through its crisp pages.
When I was a child, instead of fairy tales, my father would tell me stories about the antique porcelains in the album. I obtained an unexplainable pleasure from sitting on his knees and unraveling the intricate veils from those charming porcelains, the intense aroma of which indicated their historical nature. But not until I climbed the two-meter tall shelf to see the porcelain jars atop it did I begin to discover the real source of my father’s pleasure. Holding a reading glass and a dictionary of seal characters, I would stand on the table for hours trying to understand the depictions on the jars until I was convinced it was impossible. Frustrated, I would relent and ask my father, who patiently illuminated whatever mysteries I came across. Inspired by his brilliance, I started my journey of learning Chinese calligraphy in hopes of one day being able to appreciate the porcelains like my father did.
Spurred by these sweet memories, I stood up and headed towards the shelf. My eyes strayed to a section that had been my favorite as a child, one containing fragments from a porcelain vase that I had accidentally broken long ago. Although shattered, every piece represents a moment of the Stone Story with its vivid painting. Throughout childhood, I tried many times but failed to glue these pieces together, yet always found it exhilarating and thought-provoking to rearrange the broken segments and build my own Stone Story in different ways.
That was it! I rushed back to my computer and without hesitation abandoned the clichéd presentation format that only showcased my personal interpretation of historical events. I began typing up my plan for centering the course around storytelling. This way, everyone could present their opinions and imaginations by telling stories just as I did for myself based on the vase debris.
My new plan for the tutorial class proved itself effective almost instantaneously. Students were filled with passion when they presented their own understandings of history. As we dove into the history of the African Americans, various perspectives were introduced: the “musician” in our class turned his sight to the connection between aboriginal African music and modern genres such as jazz and blues; the feminists actively explored the sufferings of African American women, highlighting their importance in combating racial discrimination; our “poet” probed into Walt Whitman’s attitude towards slavery with an in-depth reading into his poetry. Everyone found their respective niche and together, we weaved an intricate and fascinating picture of African American history with our diverse conceptions.
History is like a broken vase. Its ultimate “truth” is always irretrievable, and thus any one-dimensional interpretation of history is prone to be problematic. Nevertheless, true historians get close to this “truth” by viewing the fragmented facts through different lenses, forming diverse perspectives, and seeing more clearly what history means for our present-day interpretations of the world.
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