What our kids don’t know can hurt us:
Why it matters to know about Africa and the rest of the world
Synopsis:
Americans know so little about the world that it is hard to imagine that one continent could be worse than the others.
Daniel Patrick Welch explores the depth of ignorance about Africa through the eyes of the press. When he and his wife
recently organized a royal visit to their school, the lack of knowledge about the “Dark Continent” became apparent on
many different levels. While the conflicts that ensue may be amusing, they foretell a Reign of Ignorance that will span
generations unless adults wake up to the fact that their children know little because they often know even less.
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It is well known that American kids traditionally score well below their foreign counterparts in geographic knowledge,
and Africa seems to be perennially at the bottom of what they know. The reasons for this shameful lack of interest or
insight are many and varied, especially given the US’ current position in the world, but a few problem areas are easy to
explain.
It is unlikely in any society, for example, that kids would outpace their teachers, parents, reporters, history texts
and authority figures in exploring and accurately obtaining knowledge about the rest of the world. And our kids face an
uphill battle through a fog of distortion, ignorance, smugness, disinterest and flat out racism. Bad press, yellow
press, sloppy and ignorant press—these are all as old as the hills. But there is often a palpable resistance, a sort of
willful ignorance—almost a vehemence—against knowing too much about the continent in whose exploitation we share such a
disturbing complicity.
From our parents’ generation, there is an understandable, if a bit ugly, fuzziness about The Dark Continent. There were
no "countries" in Africa, after all—just chunks of colonial possessions on puzzle maps laid out by European imperial
powers: French West Africa, the Belgian Congo. Lines were often drawn across traditional kingdoms, homelands and
territories of long-established societies; the point was effective administration and exploitation of vast natural
resources, not stability or respect for the people living there. The fact that these artificial divisions were creating
unavoidable tensions that would haunt the continent for generations was of no concern whatsoever, and the resulting
violence is perversely used as "evidence" that such people cannot govern themselves.
Popular culture sustained and deepened the official myths, if African managed to register at all on the cultural radar.
"I'd be just as sassy as Haile Salassie" was a throwaway rhyme in a popular song. Much later, Bob Marley balanced the
scale by setting to music the salient parts of Salasse’s challenge to the League of Nations: "Until the philosophy that
holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war."
Did Marley know about the song "Shantytown?" Who knows? But sometimes culture surpasses history in setting the record
straight.
At the time of independence, press reports were routinely and unabashedly pro-imperialist—-that is, if they had any clue
what was going on at all. Jonathan Kwitny, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, recalls this phenomenon in his book
Endless Enemies. He remembers the repeating phrase "rioting Congolese" from his youth, and then goes on to document that
footage in almost every case shows crowds of Africans running from Belgian troops.
The sad thing is how little times seem to have changed. We are still shockingly ignorant about the world in which we
play so dominant a role, and our children's future may rest on ending the cycle. Teachers, schools, reporters and
opinion shapers are still too often in the grip of the colonial mindset. Some even still use the embarrassingly outdated
lexicon of imperialism: tribe, clan, dialect, and the works, all constructs of deliberate or dismissive attempts to
delegitimize conquered peoples. Even the myth of journalistic "balance" should require the abandonment of such
sloppiness-—or invoke standards that are patently absurd. Are the Serbs a "tribe?" The Czechs? Even Liechtenstein and
Monaco get the respect that seems to elude Africans. No one refers to the Windsors as a "clan." Hell, even a few
Superbowl wins in a row qualifies as a "Dynasty." And the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italians don’t speak
"dialects," even though their languages are far more interrelated than the hundreds of complex and varied African
languages.
In arranging a recent visit to our school by the Queen of Buganda [see http://www.greenhouseschool.org], we were shocked to find one reporter actually question the fact of the monarchy, a bit of retro cavethink I thought
went out at the turn of the century. No one uses qualifiers when writing that Lucy was female, or that dinosaurs once
roamed the earth. But when it concerns Africa, suddenly there's no such thing as carbon dating or forensic anthropology,
oral history is not "real" history, and written western history is sacrosanct (like, say, the ride of Paul Revere, or
Betsy Ross' flag?) Even when the accurate references are presented to reporters, some will often simply ignore the press
release and revert to type, like playing old tapes in one’s head.
Americans are too often insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. But an ostrich only feels comfortable,
blissfully and dangerously unaware of the reality he is hiding from. The way we think, feel, talk and teach about our
past sets the tone for our present and our future. If we keep making the same mistakes in a sort of Groundhog Day time
bounce, we are depriving our children of the very tools they will need to join the greater community as citizens of the
world.
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© 2005 Daniel Patrick Welch.
Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife,
Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. Translations of articles are available in up to 20
languages. Links to the website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com.