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

[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.

[ckd]

Some classes may have been watching it. My AP English class not only didn't get to watch it, we were told to get back to reading Beowulf after the announcement. Bah.

[sartorias]

Wow, talk about sensitivity! Not.

[elianarus]

It was announced over the intercom system during my drama class - it is funny how vividly those moments imprint - the Challenger explosion, when I heard about the WTC, and, interestingly enough, my last conversation with my grandmother the day before she died. I can still do a full-sensory recall of those three - where I was standing, what I saw, heard, smelled, the temperature in the room

[sartorias]

I'd never heard of the first, thank you! I earmarked it for some day if we ever get out of debt. The Bauers for kids I knew of, but not the one for adults! AGain, earmarked--thanks!

[telophase]

I was a sophomore when it was lost - they didn't announce it, but during class the office sent people around to tell the teachers, and the teachers informed their classes in the way they thought best. I was in Theatre Arts class, and I didn't hear the conversation between my teacher and the other person, but I was convinced something had happened to Challenger because it was the only notable thing happening that day to me (I was a space geek at the time). Our teacher told us near the end of class.

[sartorias]

That one hit hard...but all the space accidents hit very, very hard.

BTW I am loving the art, but have been speed reading and have been v. bad on commenting.

[telophase]

Thank you!

space geek

[simonator]

I sometimes feel like space geekiness is the exclusive preserve of the cohort that was in grade school when the Apollo 11 moon landings happened. It is noteworthy that t dominated almost all thought in the same way as a presidential assination or 9/11. There was little other news, even though there was a war on at the time. One of my high school classmates even became motivated enough to become an astronaut. Of course she was also motivated enough to drive 900 miles in a diaper to confront her romantic rival, so she was a bit of a go getter.

[alfreda89]

I won't date myself too much, but I heard about it from a friend, and called the guy I was dating to ask: "Have you heard yet?" When he repeated my words with a question, I knew there wasn't a soft way to put it. After all -- we had started to think of space flight as routine.

Just like sailing across the ocean was in 1500 A.D.

All I said was: "The shuttle blew up." He told me years later that hearing that was the worst moment he could remember, of something happening at a distance that still could cut to the quick.

We slide through history, and what we remember is not what others remembered. Others had hippies and the Summer of Love -- we had riots in Detroit, and would they spread to smaller cities within a day's drive?

[sartorias]

Very, very true.