This essay was originally submitted to the New York Times Learning Network's 3rd Annual Connections Contest in January 2020. In March 2020, it was published in the Learning Network as one of ten winners.
The original contest prompt is included at the bottom of this post.
Who am I without my environment?
I faced this question after reading “School,” Kyoko Mori’s account of the formative differences between her Japanese and American educations.
In “School,” a chapter of her memoir “Polite Lies,” Mori explains that she writes her books and poems in English rather than Japanese because she “was never taught to write in what was [her] native language.” Her Japanese language classes were formulaic and esoteric, and the rigid and arbitrary nature of instruction provided few opportunities to explore and improve in topics and styles of writing that interested her. By contrast, her English classes gave her that freedom and feedback, and “by the time [she] was a high school senior, [she] wanted to be a writer, and English was the only language [she] could write in.”
For me, Mori’s story - a powerful example of how instrumental schools are in shaping our youth’s identities - triggered an identity crisis. Many values I hold dear and see as key, nonnegotiable parts of who I am have clear antecedents in my childhood environment. If I had not grown up here, with these experiences, who would I be? If my identity is so changeable and contingent upon circumstance, what meaning does it have? Am I anything beyond a block of wax, a portfolio gathering stamps of “wealth,” “race,” “parenting,” or “schooling?”
During this crisis, I encountered Dana Goldstein’s article, “Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories.” Goldstein details how California and Texas versions of identical history textbooks differ in portraying topics of political sensitivity, from immigration and the legacy of slavery to environmentalism and the role of capitalism in American history. These discrepancies, from revisions by government-influenced review panels, mean the states’ existing political demographics are being reinforced, generation after generation.
This story’s impact, for me, was in how tangibly it substantiated the idea of environmental identity. As a proudly progressive Californian with multiple card-carrying conservative Texan friends, this article made me wonder how different our stories might be if ten years ago we had switched Texas and California textbooks. What meaning do our political values have if they are the product of the books we happened to be raised with?
I did not leave my crisis with answers. I left with better questions. How can we condemn people for holding beliefs we disagree with, or praise ourselves for our own, when in reality all we’re doing is dutifully reflecting the influences of our environments? How can we judge people for who they are, what they’ve achieved, and what they believe without at least understanding the circumstances that got them there? In the grand scheme of things, the question of nurture versus nature is an argument for empathy.
The Learning Network's original prompt:
1. Choose some piece of academic content: something you’ve been reading, discussing or learning about in school.
It may be a work of literature, an event in history, a concept in civics, a phenomenon in science or something else entirely. It can be as small as a single haiku or as large as a world-changing event like the Industrial Revolution.
2. Find something published in The New York Times anytime in 2019 or 2020 that you think connects to your chosen subject in some interesting, meaningful way, and explain how.
You can pick any article, Op-Ed, image, video, graphic or podcast, or anything else you like, as long as it was published in The Times in 2019 or 2020.
3. Tell us, in 450 words or fewer, how and why the two things connect. Why? What does it have to do with your life and the lives of those around you? Why should you remember it once you’ve turned in that paper or taken that test?
What relevance does it have today? What lessons can you learn from it that can be applied to the world outside of school? What parallels do you see between it and something happening in our culture or the news?
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