If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” –Abraham H. Maslow

Unless you had an alternative eduction, you probably learned U.S. history the same way a majority of American students learn U.S. history, through the eyes of the power elite. According to text books, all that ever happened, happened because of presidents and wars and assassinations. We learned of Columbus ‘discovering’ the new world. We learned of Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves. These are broad strokes and highly impartial.

This is clearly an overly simplified description of a narrow overview, but I use these examples just to make a point. If we’re viewing history from the perspective of those in power, we’re not really viewing history, are we.

The frame that education uses, the frame mandated for public educational institutions, (funded by public money and which curriculum is determined by the “powers that be”), is a positive one, for the most part. Revising history is a work of fiction, ‘1984′, and couldn’t possibly happen. But if you think about it, all history is revision.

Recently I cam across a book called “The People’s History of The United States”. This book has been around for more than thirty years and is updated as history continues to unfold.

The way this book reframes history is an excellent example of how the idea of reframing works. It’s not completely negating that Columbus “discovered” America, but it’s saying, well, there were people here first and technically, Columbus wasn’t a hero because he was responsible for bring disease to and slaughtering the native population. And even if you don’t share this perspective, it’s a whole new take on the country through the eyes of the disenfranchised.

So Columbus’ discovery, through the eyes of the natives was: genocide and blankets with small pox.

And how about those cute Thanksgiving pilgrims that we regard as fleeing religious persecution and bravely venturing onto the New World. The natives might see this as more of a violent colonization by early English settlers.

There’s a fascinating reframe at the end of the most recent edition regarding the “War on Terror”. Instead of accepting the perspective, the frame that Arab terrorists attacked us on 9/11 because they hate our freedom, think about this: they were fed up with our foreign policy, our “stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia… sanctions against Iraq which… had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; [and] the continued U.S. support of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.”

That perspective is definitely not being given equal time, and yet if you think about it, unravel who stands to gain from the story that’s being given to us, you’ll see their reframe has brilliantly made people complacent.

Frames are complicated, just as reality is complicated, just as life is complicated, but if we can see the frames for what they are, then we can control them.

Tags: NLP

Popularity: 34% [?]

Share This