History (School)

Understanding the way narratives work is as important as understanding the meaning of the narrative itself. A wide variety of stories in our culture follow the same paths, which is a part of our literate learning. In many stories, the main characters have inner and outer problems that conflict in different ways. Sometimes the outer problems are the same, and the characters are driven by their distinct inner problems. The main conflict of the story drives the characters to confront their inner problems and resolve them.

To understand our community history, we must understand the narrative history of our community and observe how we respond to it. The community within which we grow up is important in shaping who we are; the environment we are shaped within influences us indirectly. In a community, lives wrap their ways around each other through mysterious and strangely influential methods.

When I was 9 years old, an historic building burnt down in our downtown area (my town has about 3500 people in it, so it is a small community, but it is very spread out as mountain communities tend to be). The entire town went downtown and watched the firefighters put out the fire and then was present for the demolition of the building and its subsequent transformation into a park. While nothing drastic changed in most of our lives due to this event (only a few people lived in the building and nobody was killed during the fire), this time was a sort of a placeholder in my childhood. The event was part of my community narrative, so it has become a part of my narrative.

Our individual communities and our shared communities (my individual of Lewisburg, West Virginia, our shared community of the Eastern United States [I feel like different pieces of our country have much different cultural expectations at different points in our lives]) have different rites of passage and cultural expectations at different points in our lives. Watch any 80s movie and see the "new guy" continue his normal, cultural, teenage struggle in his new home, but then have to learn and conquer the rituals of his new community. (The Karate Kid moves across the country and has to continue adolescence, go on his first date, get a car, etc. but also deal with the "karate tough kids" in the neighborhood that he didn't experience in New York).

By exploring our community history and the rituals and passages associated with it, we can begin to see what things are important to our individual communities. A community doesn't always have to be a town, it can be a cluster of towns, a sub-community, a neighborhood, as long as it was an outside, independently progressing unit of people and place strongly present in the environment of our growth.