Time passes. Memories fade. People stop caring about the past. This mentality is the source of much of the world’s suffering, and indeed always has been. As is said in an adapted quote from George Santayana: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. I refer to this quote quite often, and with good reason. It can be applied near-effortlessly to almost any social studies/history subject, just like our current subject. Ooh! Fun fact! The reason I say “adapted” quote is because the original version was actually “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Regardless, I suppose it’s time to actually explain what this project is about, but first, I shall once again insert a picture of ol’ George.
Image source: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/george-santayana-221.php
So, with that out of the way I think it’s time we lay out some information. This project is all about “Stories of Hope”, particularly in the American South. Of course, we first need to define a story of hope. A story of hope is a story about how people have showed resilience and faced adversity, inspiring others in the process. I personally had my own interesting direction to take this project in, more on that later, and by later I mean now. My idea was to prove a little theory I had. What was that theory? Simply put, I believe that by showcasing not just the inspirational and triumphant parts of a story, but the tragedies and defeats as well, I could paint a far greater and more impactful story. For example, if you had heard that Someone survived descending a staircase, you’d probably think that the statement was just a random, insignificant joke. However, if you had heard that someone had fallen down a flight of stairs containing 100 steps, broken several bones, crippling their ability to walk for months, forcing a rib to through pierce their lung, and causing a severe concussion that took a full year to recover from, yet somehow managed to cling on to life, you would likely be impressed at the victim’s strength to pull through. You see? Hearing simply that someone survived means nothing. I’m surviving writing this post right now. It’s when you hear the gruesome details of exactly what someone survived that opens your mind where you were once recalcitrant.
Image source: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/flight-of-steps-ester-rogers.html
I’ve gotten to thinking, what if your first thoughts about this project are the same as my own? That the American South is a strange choice for this project. After all, the South hasn’t really ever been in a position where they were facing great amounts of tyranny, it’s never been poor, and being a part o a developed western nation, the people there have great amounts of privilege afforded to them. I’ll admit, I can’t explain with 100% certainty, so I’ll do the best I can. First of all, there’s a history of slavery and racism, which I personally think was ignored too much during the project. Second, there’s the large number of terrorist attacks that have been carried out against the region. Finally, there’s the fact from Vancouver, Canada, where I live, it’s a pretty easy part of the world to travel to. If you didn’t catch my drift, let me spell it out. We went on a 10-day overnight trip to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri, with flight connection stops in Colorado (intended), and California (emergency nighttime stay due to delayed flight causing us to miss our connection flight). It was quite a trip, and while not everyone went, we still had a good time and learned a lot.
Perhaps the most important part of this post is to share my final product from this project. As for what that may be, you can either scroll down to learn, or read this if you want. Our goal was to answer our driving question: “What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity?” through the medium of video. Without further ado, here it is.
Alas, every post always comes down to this present piece. A necessary cog in the machine, at least, under our current education system, The core competencies will now be presented. Questioning ability was fairly strong in my case, due to my reasonably frequent asking of questions, and extremely frequent questioning of the system we live under. Processing is something I wish I could say I did well, but due to my failure to process information in a timely fashion, I lose a lot of points, at least, in my opinion, and I’m sure in the teacher’s opinions as well. Say what you will about my decision-making capabilities, but I’d say they’re pretty solid for someone with my levels of mental disorder. They’re not bad overall either. My ability to form my own strong opinions and subsequently act upon them is certainly a strength of mine.
That concludes this lovely post. I’ll admit, this was a big chunk of my Sunday. Still waiting for my Nintendo switch to be shipped back home after I left it in the hotel on a different trip, but you didn’t come here for my griping. What you DID come for is a nice ol’
*Brofist*