Recently controversy arose when pictures of murals in George Washington High School located in San Francisco, California were brought to attention. These murals weren’t normal murals you see while walking down the hallway in school, they didn’t have people of all colors holding hand and smiling, getting along with one another. History is an amazing thing, we learn about our country’s past, our ancestors’ past, our own past–but it can also be an ugly thing. This art just happened to show the ugly side of history: George Washington points towards the dead body of a Native American while his slaves are in the back of the picture, hunched over working.

As horrible as this sounds for this to be in a school’s hallway, it’s actually a good thing. In history we learn about these things, we know Native Americans were killed by white settlers and that our founding fathers had slaves. We already know this, we have been taught this for years, it’s not at least it should not be a surprise if they are representing these historical events in schools.

“I think it’s important for students especially in high school to learn about what has happened in history, but I also think we’re living in a very liberal world and not that I think that there is anything wrong with being liberal but people can look at these murals and think that America is a bad place but it’s not, it’s one of the best places to live,” senior Alanha Rudd said. “Our Constitution was one of the greatest documents made in not only American history but in world history. I think it’s a good thing because it makes students aware of the ugly things in history that we aren’t taught about in schools, the things that teachers avoid teaching us. it’s important to know where America came from and where it’s heading as a nation.”

I would understand these murals being an issue if they were in an elementary or middle school but as high school students we have seen much more gruesome things in the video games we play and the movies we watch.  Seeing things like this every day will remind those students to not forget about what has happened in the past, so it never happens again. They will remember the country was in the wrong then. It’s like how we read about and remember the Holocaust so it won’t happen again. If students, the next generation to run our country, are constantly reminded of the tragedies that happened so long ago we can continue to move forward.