Edison and the Way We Teach History
Education Rethink 2013-05-06
It's been well-documented in recent times that Edison often stole ideas and fought ugly smear campaigns against real inventors, such as Tesla. The Oatmeal has done a fantastic job explaining the dark side of Thomas Edison. It's too bad the comic isn't appropriate for classroom use. I never realized until college, just how brutal Edison was. I didn't realize that he would publicly electrocute animals (often "strays" stolen from people's yards) to try and prove that the AC method was too dangerous. One famous case involved Topsy, a circus elephant who was badly abused, killed three people, she was sentenced to death. Edison used this as an opportunity to show a more "humane" way of killing the elephant. They fed Topsy 460 grams of carrots soaked in potassium cyanide. The executioners ran a 6,600 volt electric charge before a cheering crowd of 1,500. Edison used this to prove that AC was too dangerous for consumer use. In addition, he video-recorded the event and ran it as one of the earliest successful silent movies. There are other well-documented cases showing just how brutal Edison tended to be. But I think the Topsy event tells enough about his character. And yet . . . We still have schools named after Edison. We still have glowing reviews about Edison in our textbooks, where he is somehow placed among the progressives. He is called an innovator and a visionary. Our state standards refer to him as an inventor (a generous term). We still have children's books that bear his name (I'm hoping that electrocuting dogs is not included in this book) 
I get it. People don't want to learn that there is a dark side to their heroes. They don't want to believe that Edison was a punk or that Columbus enslaved and raped people. They call this "revisionist." Which is odd, because, in any other area of life (besides history) a revision is considered a good thing (unless you like your first generation iPod better than your iPhone 5).
This is why kids grow up hating history. They learn it in such a glorified, dishonest way that it doesn't demonstrate the humanity that they see in their world. We can gain a more relevant and deeper understanding of history if we allow children to know the truth about history.
When I teach the story of Topsy and the ripping of ideas, Edison suddenly matters. I don't have to lecture them. I don't have to make the connections for them. They automatically apply it to our times and to the question of capitalizing on creativity. As they read the primary sources and piece together the facts, they suddenly realize that their heroes aren't always heroic. They wrestle with big questions. They think about the true meaning of innovation.
Ultimately, they question their world. They think twice about automatically believing the hero narrative. They grow skeptical about powerful people proposing big ideas to save the world.
Note: I think it's fascinating that, at one point, Edison became obsessed with getting his gadgets into schools and in the process, he gave speeches about education reform. So many parallels to what's happening right now.