Historical Significance

The module on the oil crisis is another great example of how the “master narrative” shapes our view on things. In high school, I never learned about the oil crisis in 1970. I think that was because history teachers don’t think this time period is significant enough to teach more in-depth knowledge about. It might have something to do with the fact highschoolers aren't super happy to learn about the economics involved or the Vietnam war overshadowed everything else that might have happened in this time period in terms of historical significance. When trying to decide what to teach the teacher might lean towards the Vietnam war simply because it was a very significant war. While the oil crisis wasn't quite as “world-altering”. While I wish some of the more impactful lessons that we learned during the oil crisis would be taught in schools. Such as the impacts that the lack of oil did for the nation in terms of overcoming and adapting to the new and innovative ways to produce energy. Such as the Nixon energy plan I don't think many people would who just have a basic understanding of American history know about this. After the lessons, I looked up some of the good things Nixon did to see if my tainted view of him was totally right. Apparently, he called for the construction of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. He completely changed the views on American energy policy. This is just another thing that doesn't get that stamp of historical significance.