Kids and a sense of history

[sartorias]

I remember my own introduction to US History half a century ago: how incredibly boring it was. Behavior and grunt memorization were the keynotes of history, with side-trips for making graphs and tables. Always, of course, with the US of A as Number One In All Things

Comments

[asakiyume]

That switching point in the French Revolution, from optimism and the power to really make positive change... to everything falling apart and going crazy--that's something that scares me

[sartorias]

He probably remembers true. At least, I've read that surviving Civil War people were feted when discovered (at least white ones were, disgusting as that is) and quite a few lived to astonishingly old ages.

[handworn]

The last Union veteran died in 1942, I believe it was, and the last Confederate, in 1959! At, obviously, extraordinary old age.

The fact that they were feted reminds me of that story from Twain, I believe it was, in which the two boys come across this very old veteran of the Revolution. The town is up and joyous about this, and invites him to show up in his old uniform at their Fourth of July parade. Yep. He was a Redcoat.

[sartorias]

lol!

[sartorias]

Oh yes....the proverbial time machine I would use to go back armed with medicines to save the likes of John Keats and Sir Phillip sydney (though I would hope that he wouldn't turn out to be a monster) but the very dark side is the equally strong wish to go back and smother Hitler and many of his like in their cribs.

[handworn]

But herein lies the problem with smothering Hitler, etc., in the crib: it wouldn't change the underlying conditions that led to what they became and what they did. If you went and disgraced a person whose advice turned Woodrow Wilson away from standing in the way of the rabid desire for punishing vengeance on Germany by France and England and so on, Germany might not have become the kind of place it was, and, more prosperous, have ignored or defeated Hitler. Poor, defeated places are breeding grounds for this kind of thing-- look at the founding and rise of the Klan in the South after the Civil War.

[sartorias]

I am well aware of all these cogent arguments--and the idea that if Hitler hadn't been there, someone else might have taken his place--but stiil, one's engagement with history is often mostly deeply on the personal level, and there is a very dark part of me that would not only do the deed but relish it. That dark part gets channeled into storytelling, which is only shadows on the cave wall, and the uninterested can easily turn their eyes away, and no harm done.

[dsgood]

The night the Berlin Wall went up, I was listening to Radio Moscow. I didn't find out what had happened till the next day.

The Radio Moscow commentator was talking about it, at much length. But she was explaining why taking this action was necessary -- and I couldn't figure out what the action was.

[sartorias]

Yes...that one was hard to grasp on a personal level, over here. I later learned how terrible it was when I traveled to Germany and Austria and heard the older generation's talk of their own memories of the war and post-war events.

[simonator]

Of course that was especially confusing to learn about. "Wait, the Berlin wall came AFTER the Berling Airlift?" The idea that they could have beseiged the city without having a wall around it really threw me for a loop in history class. I suspect that the wall coming down was almost more iconic than it going up. It bookended the cold war instead of being another event in it.

[handworn]

I know exactly what you mean about history. Stephen Crane once said he wrote The Red Badge of Courage so he could feel what it was like being there, not just read dry-bones dates and names in books. You might enjoy Barbara Hambly's Patriot Hearts which just came out earlier this year, about the first three First Ladies and Sally Hemings. We liked it.

The Where-Were-You-When-You-Heard event for me was the explosion of the Challenger. Oh, and 9/11, naturally, but for my childhood, it was the Challenger.

[sartorias]

My daughter was a shade too young (just turned three) to remember Challenger, but oh, that is still a shocking memory: I watched it upstairs on TV with my spouse's grandmother, who kept shaking her head and saying that when she was young automobiles were the most dangerous machines anyone knew about.

[ckd]

Yeah, the Challenger was lost during my senior year of high school. Some things hadn't changed since 1963 (though in that school they had, since it hadn't been built until 1981); we still had the overhead speakers, and the principal made the announcement.

[sartorias]

Ah. So your school wasn't one of the many watching it on live TV? That was a schooltime toughie, let me tell you: as late as a few years ago some teachers refused to show any more landings or takeoffs.

[sartorias]

How wonderful!

We've had vets speak once or twice, though it usually hasn't been a happy match, as either they use language that we get hammered for later in frantic parental phonecalls, or else they speak about tactical and strategic detail that might be enthralling to us, but leaves the kids fidgetting.