Standard 11

History
I never liked history. Saying something so definitive about so broad a term as history is something I never thought twice about. I thought I knew an interesting little detail about who I was, yet, really all I was doing was closing my mind to possibilities and blocking out opportunities for learning. When I say “I don’t like history”, I just turned off my receptiveness to truly hearing something meaningful. I still don’t completely love studying history, but I do have an understanding and respect for the importance of the knowledge that we gain from knowing it.
History isn’t just about dates and facts and lists of arbitrary information. Mostly, history is about people. Something I love very much. I love interacting with people and watching people, and helping people. I believe in people. When I hear interesting, inspiring, or even intimidating stories about people (i.e. history), I can now appreciate the power those stories have on the progress that can happen when you really consider what’s happened in the past, learn from it and act accordingly. It’s transformational when you hear stories about people. When a certain populations’ perspective is shared with your own, you begin to understand them and their journey. You are privy to learn what was difficult or easy, what worked and what didn’t, and possibly how to recreate or avoid similar situations. Often times, you can understand why people are they way they are and have a comfortable idea as to how to best relate to them, or at the very least, a respectable place to start. In this way, history brings people together and allows them to work together, which is one fundamental element of Human Services.
For example: I researched and documented some of the historical journey of Deaf people. (appendix A) Deaf people have been regarded in all different ways. They took it upon themselves to teach the world who they were, and how they expected to be treated. It was a difficult struggle, that is still not over for many. But, the reality is, most Deaf people are very strong in defending who they are and the culture they’ve built together. This type of knowledge is helpful in working with Deaf people as well as all other people as an advocate for their journey specifically and more generally, for social change in the context of systematically working against oppression.
Around the same time I was reading and writing about the history of Deaf people and thinking about oppression and the very real struggles it causes people, I was using my personal time to read about individual stories about sexuality. I was using the history of people who identified other than heterosexual in order to relate to myself. One of my shattered, shriveled and ignored portions of my soul had not a little bit, but everything to do with the way that I felt about my self-identified bi-sexuality. I was searching for parts of other peoples’ journey that could help me. As it were, I found much comfort and enlightenment in learning history from other bisexuals. I began building strength to more openly wear a part of myself that I knew was there, but was not nurtured. Knowing history from others shed light on my current situation and infused me with the spark to explore these bits of myself and see how far they grow. And grow they did.
In the very same way historical stories are helpful in knowing about Deaf people and bisexuals, stories about Human Services, movements for populations of people, political stories and stories about social change are vital in understanding both the history of Human Services as well as how to proceed toward a vision for any population and/or government.
At one point in my path of understanding history I collaborated with a peer while considering some questions about ideologies and systems of governance. (Appendix B) Together we identified what role many of those perspectives have in the lives and minds of people. Ideologies, for example, “can impact how we see the world because they act as the lenses for viewing”. Ideologies and systems of governance, such as democratic capitalism, exist only because over time, people made them that way.
A short time after, I demonstrated my knowledge about the relationships between political ideologies, social-stratification, class-ism, and Human Services. (Appendix C) All of these concepts are created and maintained by people over time. Every person, concept, system, government… etc has a relevant history that intrinsically blends with the next.
I also wrote a bit about the history of Human Services and concepts of social change (Appendix D), which really boils down to a large collection of stories about a many people, their strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and short-comings. An even broader history comes from those stories and is used as a guiding light in learning and planning for the future. History, be it about, you, another individual, a group of people or an entire population can and should be applied infinitely in questioning and problem solving in issues of any scale.