History is meant to teach us about the past, to help us understand the world we live in today. But what happens when history is told in a way that robs us of our dignity, manipulates our identity, and leaves us feeling cheated?
Growing up in Mozambique, I always loved reading history books. I wanted to learn, to understand. But instead of feeling enlightened, I often found myself feeling wounded, betrayed, and manipulated by what I read. It felt like history was being told in a way that was not just incomplete—but harmful.
Take a simple example: a family dinner. Imagine four people at the table—two grandparents from the Gaza tribe and two granddaughters, who are of mixed tribal heritage, including Inhambane. The conversation turns to history, and suddenly, old tensions surface. The Gaza elders recall how a man from Inhambane once betrayed the people, revealing a secret that led to Ngungunhane’s capture and exile in Lisbon. As a result, the Portuguese labeled Inhambane "terra de boa gente" (land of good people), a title that still sticks today. But was that really a compliment? Or was it a manipulation tactic—one designed to divide, to make one group feel superior while isolating another?
This is the kind of history we inherit, not just in books but in the way people talk, in the way identities are shaped. But the problem isn’t just how history is remembered—it’s how it’s taught.
The Flaws in Our History Education
I grew up learning nothing about the fight for freedom.
Nothing about what existed before Vasco da Gama.
Nothing about the events that led to FRELIMO’s formation.
It was always just a short paragraph, as if it didn’t really matter. But what did matter? The lessons we were constantly given:
We were slaves.
We were oppressed.
The colonizer assimilated us to become “proper” laborers.
That was the narrative. Not the resilience, not the resistance, not the power we had before colonization. And when that is the only story we tell, what does that do to young black children? What does that tell them about who they are?
I remember learning this in the fourth grade, sitting in a classroom where black children and white children shared space. And I wondered—what was I supposed to feel? Were we being pushed to see each other as enemies? Were we supposed to feel like descendants of a failed nation?
If history is taught without care, it creates division, resentment, and self-hatred. And I saw this firsthand in my own family.
"Colonialism Didn’t Just Steal Land—It Stole Identity "
My grandfather is a fully black man, yet he often refers to himself as white. Not because he’s confused about his heritage, but because, to him, white means educated, emotionally stable, financially secure, well-cultured—all the good things. And black? Well, you can imagine the adjectives that come with that.
This mindset didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a history that was told in a way that erased our greatness and glorified our oppressors. It came from decades of psychological conditioning that made blackness something to escape, rather than something to embrace.
That is why ethical history education is urgent. Because this damage doesn’t just exist in the past—it’s alive today.
What Ethical History Teaching Should Look Like
If we want to break these cycles, we need to change the way history is taught. Ethical history is not about romanticizing the past or avoiding painful truths, but about presenting them in a way that is honest, empowering, and constructive.
Imagine if Mozambican children learned about:
Pre-colonial civilizations – The great kingdoms and trading networks that thrived before the Portuguese arrived. The fact that Vasco da Gama discovered nothing—he encountered societies that already existed.
The resistance movements – The people who fought for freedom, the strategies they used, the victories they won. Not just a dry paragraph about FRELIMO, but real stories that show the power of the people.
How colonialism manipulated identity – Understanding that labels like "boa gente" were not innocent but were tactics used to divide and control.
Post-colonial realities and the way forward – Teaching young people how to heal, how to reclaim their identity, and how to build something better.
This is the kind of history that builds people instead of breaking them.
A Call for Change
Right now, this kind of history isn’t widely taught in Mozambican schools. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be. If the education system won’t change overnight, then maybe the conversation needs to start elsewhere—in books, in community initiatives, in online spaces like this.
We have to reclaim our stories.
We have to tell history in a way that does justice to those who came before us.
We have to teach history in a way that empowers those who come after us.
Because if we don’t, we risk repeating the same psychological chains that were placed on our ancestors.
History should not just tell us where we’ve been—it should help us decide where we’re going.
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Some ideas are argued. Others are remembered because they became stories.
Discover the meaning of apologue—a literary form in which philosophy speaks through narrative.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
This week I’m sharing some thoughts about teaching and learning that have been on my mind. It is hard for me to hear about students who are struggling with teachers or professors who try to trick them with impossible tests and quizzes – where students really do know the material, but everyone still does poorly and class grades have to be rounded up. This kind of behavior…
Spotify’s recent efforts to analyze listener behavior have produced a torrent of data, and they raise questions about how that data can and should be used. Some findings are more interesting than others, and one has to consider that this research is driven by economic motives, primarily the desire “to create a level of ad personalization that is quite unprecedented,” as Adam Bly, Spotify’s VP of data, explains. So the questions of privacy raised by the methods and objectives of this research are real and not to be taken lightly.
Having said that, I wonder about the possible pros and cons of using findings from this research as resources in the classroom. For example, the categories of streaming habits that Spotify has identified through its analysis of user data could be useful as conversation starters in discussions about music listening with students. These categories are: Discovery (the measure of how much people seek out unfamiliar music), Diversity (the range of music that people listen to), and Tilt (how actively people curate their streaming experience). See these categories explained in additional (both interesting and absurd) detail on the Spotify page “Understanding People Through Music.” Since musicians often take listening for granted, considering these categories might encourage students to think critically about their own listening habits, and ways in which they can listen to music in different ways.
Ultimately, I am wary of using economics-driven industry data in a way that presents it as an objective picture of music listening behavior. But, as long as the data is contextualized appropriately, it could be a useful tool for discussing music listening with students. As a recent quick survey of students in one class illustrated, the majority of music students today use Spotify as their primary go-to for listening to music, so Spotify is in a unique position to study listening behavior.
