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History--it's All Frames |
By:
Kenrick Cleveland |
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History--it's All Frames
Kenrick Cleveland
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." --Abraham H. Maslow
Unless you had an alternative eduction, you probably learned U.S. history the same way a majority of American students learn U.S. history, through the eyes of the power elite. According to text books, all that ever happened, happened because of presidents and wars and assassinations. We learned of Columbus 'discovering' the new world. We learned of Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves. These are broad strokes and highly impartial.
My examples are oversimplified and narrow (a lot like the text book's version of history), and I use them to make this point. Viewing our history from this perspective isn't really knowing or understanding history.
Educational institutions use frames whether they describe them as such or not. The frame public schools work within has mostly to do with what the powers that be will allow as history. Text books are consistently banned for information that may seem to 'radical' which, in essence, is what all of history is. Helen Keller, for example, wasn't just a deaf/blind/mute woman, but a great humanitarian who spoke on behalf of change in a period of nationalism and capitalist control. The fact that many of the early presidents were slave owners is consistently glossed over because 'that's how it was at the time'. History is revised in a very Orwellian way when school boards choose what to present and what not to.
Recently I cam across a book called "The People's History of The United States". This book has been around for more than thirty years and is updated as history continues to unfold.
"The People's History" is a prime example of a reframe. Some would consider the perspective to be more socialist or radical, and whether or not you believe it to be valid, it is an amazing way to look at history which has seldom been seen through the eyes of the disenfranchised.
Look at Columbus' "discovery" from the perspective of the people who were already there: genocide and blankets with small pox.
There were pilgrims who on the record were escaping religious persecution, but to the natives they were colonizing them.
At the end of the most recent edition of "The People's History" is an amazing reframe of the "war on terror". For the most part, people have accepted what the media and powers that be have handed out as the reason Arab terrorists attacked us on 9/11--they hate our freedom. Hmmm. . . But maybe they hate our foreign policy and would leave us alone if we left them alone. Maybe they're simply fed up because we have stationed "U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia... sanctions against Iraq which... had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; [and] the continued U.S. support of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land."
That perspective is definitely not being given equal time, and yet if you think about it, unravel who stands to gain from the story that's being given to us, you'll see their reframe has brilliantly made people complacent.
Frames are complicated, just as reality is complicated, just as life is complicated, but if we can see the frames for what they are, then we can control them.
Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent clients using http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ persuasion techniques.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article71725.html |
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