Pedagogy vs. Indifference in Teaching Students History

Was sitting in the park texting this to myself today: In continued contemplation of a series of discussions i had lately, I concur with my own position. In lines with Howard Zinn, one cannot be neutral on a moving train. Be it objective journalism or responsible teaching, in alignment with postmodern thinkers like Foucault, nothing is ever objective. The objectivity that is considered idealism in a classroom or a media outlet, for me is an irresponsible cold-indifference. Take for instance my recent debate on whether my own middle-class high school system had a good history department or not, I felt that my high school history program in the 1990's was not worthy enough of praise. First off, the teachers were primarily football and track coaches. They taught history as if it was a game, a sense of trivia. They spoke of their favorite athletes more often than current history in the making in the 1990's. If they spoke of history it was history of the past. History, I learned after 9/11, when I started intensely reading global history and US foreign policy. History I learned was a tool for making change and making a voice. Never did my education in the 1990's focus on the genocides that were happening while I was a child, that were preventable: Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, East Timor, El Salvador, Panama, the Balkans, and more. Instead, as products of American media great distraction, the 1990s was all talk about Clinton sex scandal, not his bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the meddling of the 96 Russian election. Media diverted our eyes to focus on Tanya Harding, OJ Simpson, Amy Fisher and more. And our media and educators did not take a moral ground. One discussion I had recently with a friend was about the reason that journalists have to be objective. Objectivity in media is not brave, just as in the classroom. Relaying the information to students and viewers does have to be responsibly displayed, but the assumption there that listening ears know what is right from wrong and can make concerned opinions. ...However, if the observer has never been taught what is right from wrong, then all the objectivity is indifferent. For example, when a corporation poisons local drinking water be it in New York State or in Bhopal, India. If the observer is only seeing that this is good for business capital and these children are externalities, what does it say about the indifference from the media market system? As in the example of discussing why the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it has been proven that Truman knew the Japanese were going to surrender and he did not have to drop the bomb, it is not brave for a reporter or a teacher to just relay the information. Because what happens when we teach or report on the horrors of the Holocaust? We hope that our children or our citizens know that this was ethically incorrect, but as we see, there are many Americans who still embrace the Confederacy. A Teacher or Reporter has to do more than just objectively report on atrocities, they have to be brave enough to point out the crimes. It isnt enough to say that there are not two sides to discuss the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered innocent people. We also have to reflect on how many US corporations traded with the Nazis and knew it was wrong and did not get held accountable: IBM, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ford and more. Otherwise there is no Code of Ethics, just sharing indifferent random facts. ... Obtaining facts and keeping the accuracy of the facts is vitally important. Facts can often as we have seen be twisted for personal gain. Hence the pretense for Bush-Cheney's false wars that callously invaded two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, but whose private corporate interests from weapon sales to oil profits were obviously gained. It is our responsibility as journalists, teachers and parents to make sure we provide a Code of Ethics too, because if we don't than who will? We have to be brave to not be indifferent, we have to when we contradict our stances admit hypocrisy, so that we can be more accountable, and we have to acknowledge that if not us, then who?