The headline at Drudge Report grabbed me (and yes, I do read Drudge; I know it’s mostly tabloid garbage, and Drudge himself is generally acknowledged to be a shill for the GOP and its *ahem* friends, but some of the articles he links to are interesting, and on occasion, useful. Plus it never hurts to scope out the opposition): apparently, teachers in Britain were steering away from discussing the Holocaust and the Crusades in their history classes. Generally, I’m skeptical of material at Drudge, because he tends to tweak the headlines to slant the perspective to his ideological bent. But I went ahead and clicked on it. I later found the article again, published in a different newspaper.

As a former historian-in-training who still occasionally lectures and teaches, and definitely as an armchair history buff, this trend troubles me. It’s not just Britain where you have problems with teachers being pressured to revise history. I know I’ve been approached by “interested people” and asked questions about what *really* happened in the South in the antebellum era, or how the North was just as bad as the South when it came to suppressing black’s rights. My response always is, sure, the picture is far more complex than “Gone With The Wind,” “Band of Angels,” or any number of movies about the romanticized South. But that complex portrait means there’s no “winners” or “losers” on either side; there’s just humanity, and the muddled mess it seems to make of a lot of issues. There’s always courage, valor, bravery, and bright shining spots, yes, but there’s also mud, muck, and a lot of vileness that comes with it too. In other words, not so much black and white as varied shades of grey.

There’s a danger though, that comes with black and white perceptions, and that is that such a worldview creates a tendency to view world history and events in an either-or mindframe, rather than as a series of interconnected events. Take the Holocaust, for example: it wasn’t a simple matter of the Germans hating the Jews; anti-Semitism is an old story in Europe, and you can find examples thereof in the history of just about every European nation prior to the 1930’s. It’s important to understand this history to be able to comprehend not only the Holocaust, but also the mindset of the Jews in the immediate post-war years, because it affects how Jews changed their perceptions about Zionism and the attempts to re-settle in Israel. When it comes to history, you can’t retailor or omit facts; you have to take the good with the bad, and synthesize what happened to be able to understand, or at least attempt to interpret the story.

The same is true of the Crusades. My readings over the last few years led me to believe the Palestinians and Arabs were getting a raw deal in many ways, but for Muslims to reject this history simply because it doesn’t square with ethnic, cultural, or religious worldviews is not only damaging to the public discourse, it’s harmful to their own education and perceptions of events.

What’s equally worrisome is how teachers are caught in the middle. It really shouldn’t be this way, where this group or that pressures educators to “tell it like it really is.” This dilemma isn’t just limited to history: it’s a problem in the sciences too, where you have battles between creationists on one hand, and just about everyone else on the other. Religion is an important part of both history and science (think for example of the religious persecutions of Copernicus and Galileo, or the monks’ efforts to copy important works during the Dark and Middle Ages, thus preserving ancient texts for the Modern era, or the tolerance and support of education and the arts in Muslim-controlled areas during the same time period, which were then eventually conveyed from the East to the West, thus ensuring we know of the Greek scientists, philosophers, and historians to this day), but religion should be a part of the story, and not dominate it. I hope that the educators in Britain and their supervisors will come to their senses and teach history as it’s meant to be told, warts and all.

Deaf West Theatre has entered the post-Big River era lately, with its recent production of “One Act Plays: Krapp’s Last Tape and Zoo Story” following in the footsteps of Open Window, which was performed at the venerable Pasadena Playhouse. Now, Deaf West’s latest offering is Sleeping Beauty Wakes, starring Alexandria Wailes and Russell Harvard, along with Troy Kotsur, Deanne Bray, and others, both deaf and hearing actors.

Although the play’s official opening is this Saturday evening, April 7 (the show’s sold out, from what I understand), it’s already opened this past weekend. The Los Angeles Times has published a review (with a typically “hearing” headline: “Poetry in the Hands”), and there’s a discussion on the board at BroadwayWorld.com. Apparently the show is generating some positive buzz, and that’s good, considering that according to Erika Amato, seats were 75% sold out– that was as of March 15. It’s now April, so…
We’re looking forward to seeing the show, and I’ll post my thoughts once we’ve been there, done that. Hopefully, if it’s as good as the brief glimpse I saw earlier last month at a special PR session and “preview” at GLAD, it just might stretch its run. Maybe, maybe not. But lightning does strike twice– if Big River could do it, it’s possible Sleeping Beauty Wakes could too.

There’s a special performance on April 8 (I believe tickets are no longer available) that will benefit GLAD, and a number of people in the L.A. area will attend, so it’s possible we’ll all be seeing a number of reviews before long.

The exposure through popular culture lately has been great, I think, regardless of whatever flaws exist. From “Through Deaf Eyes” to “Law and Order” to Sleeping Beauty Awakes, more and more people are being introduced and exposed to ASL and Deaf culture. Even if it’s not fully “our story” or the types of performance or ASL use we’d like to see, it’s all beneficial in the long run I think. ASL and Deafness now isn’t shunted to the sidelines– it’s on TV, in the theater, and showcased as normal and a part of our daily lives and experiences. I’m just glad that in spite of the recent budget cuts from the feds, Deaf West is not only surviving, but persevering, and even blossoming. I’m also happy that we live in an area where we have access to the arts.

But of course, the big question here is, will our Deaf Sleeping Beauty live Happily Ever After? I’ll have to wait a while longer to find out for sure.