THANKSGIVING
Realised today that it is, or will soon be, Thanksgiving in the US. I have very little idea of what Thanksgiving is about. However, I think it might be about giving thanks to Native Americans for seeing early European settlers through their first couple of winters in New England on the East Coast. Without their help in identifying hitherto unseen and unidentified plants for the purpose of eating and treating medical ailments, and their guidance in building shelter, the pilgrims would have perished. This is guesswork - I couldn't say for sure. I have only a few nuggets of (mis-)information absorbed here-and-there from long-forgotten sources. I think the gratitude was largely due from Western European settlers, rather than Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe.
This started me thinking about the curriculum in schools and about society in general. At school, all children are taught about Ramadam and Eid, and a bunch of other festivals reflecting the ethnicity/cultural values of children, and society at large. Nothing too wrong with this, yet noone ever mentions Thanksgiving. Surely Thanksgiving is important somehow? I wouldn't object to being a bit better informed about it. After all, didn't it come into being because of an exodus of people from, amongst other places, Britain and Ireland? From a purely pragmatic point of view, it seems necessary to know a little bit about this: the US economy seems to shut down, pretty much; flights are booked solid, offices are closed, international trading comes to a standstill, etc. Yet no-one is educated about the reasons behind this festival called Thanksgiving. Perhaps I missed a 50-minute lesson of Personal, Social Education (or whatever it's called these days) somewhere down the line? Yet I can recall entire spending an entire half-term on Diwali!
Realised today that it is, or will soon be, Thanksgiving in the US. I have very little idea of what Thanksgiving is about. However, I think it might be about giving thanks to Native Americans for seeing early European settlers through their first couple of winters in New England on the East Coast. Without their help in identifying hitherto unseen and unidentified plants for the purpose of eating and treating medical ailments, and their guidance in building shelter, the pilgrims would have perished. This is guesswork - I couldn't say for sure. I have only a few nuggets of (mis-)information absorbed here-and-there from long-forgotten sources. I think the gratitude was largely due from Western European settlers, rather than Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe.
This started me thinking about the curriculum in schools and about society in general. At school, all children are taught about Ramadam and Eid, and a bunch of other festivals reflecting the ethnicity/cultural values of children, and society at large. Nothing too wrong with this, yet noone ever mentions Thanksgiving. Surely Thanksgiving is important somehow? I wouldn't object to being a bit better informed about it. After all, didn't it come into being because of an exodus of people from, amongst other places, Britain and Ireland? From a purely pragmatic point of view, it seems necessary to know a little bit about this: the US economy seems to shut down, pretty much; flights are booked solid, offices are closed, international trading comes to a standstill, etc. Yet no-one is educated about the reasons behind this festival called Thanksgiving. Perhaps I missed a 50-minute lesson of Personal, Social Education (or whatever it's called these days) somewhere down the line? Yet I can recall entire spending an entire half-term on Diwali!
