Below you will find two poems. Read through both poems and answer the prompt.
Prompt: In reading both poems, determine what is being said about the way history is taught. Explain how the authors use their poetic devices to examine the way history is taught and understood in society.
Southern History by Natasha Trethewey
Before the war, they were happy, he said.
quoting our textbook. (This was senior-year
history class.) The slaves were clothed, fed,
and better off under a master’s care.
I watched the words blur on the page. No one
raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.
It was late; we still had Reconstruction
to cover before the test, and — luckily —
three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.
History, the teacher said, of the old South —
a true account of how things were back then.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,
bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof — a lie
my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.
The History Teacher by Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students’ innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,
bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof — a lie
my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.
The History Teacher by Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students’ innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
Both poems convey the idea that history is taught in a bias and completely inaccurate manner. Each teacher is attempting to downplay tragic events. Trethewey discusses how the topic of American history and slavery were taught during her senior year. The teacher refused to acknowledge such wrongful events stating, “The slaves were clothed, fed, and better off under a master’s care”. The author also mentions how she never spoke up, fearing what others may say, accepting the ridiculously blatant lies being told. Billy Collins portrays a similar classroom atmosphere, with even more extreme lessening of significant events: “The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions”. In reality, this time period involved mass executions of non-Catholics and revived feeling of racism. Both authors use detailed imagery to set the classroom scene and draw the reader in. The authors also use allusions to their advantage to compare appalling events to everyday objects or ideas. I believe that even certain events today in history class are not covered thoroughly because of shame and disgust. The Trail of Tears for instance is a widely known American act that massacred Cherokee populations, however few know of the true devastation. If history continues to be downplayed and underestimated, students will continue to act out with carelessness, violence, and racism.
ReplyDeleteIn the following poems, both authors tell a story about two history teachers teaching their students about history of our world. However, both history teaches fail to teach their students about the true historical events and what happened. In the poem, “Southern History” by Natasha Trethewey, the history teacher is teacher a senior American History class. The teacher sugar coats slavery by stating, “The slaves were clothed, fed,/and better off under a master’s care”(Lines 3-4), which is obviously a lie because the slaves were treated horribly. In the second poem entitled, “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, the teacher talks about different events in history that were major events and the teacher makes them seem that there were nothing. In lines 1-2 Collins writes, “The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more/than an outbreak of questions…”, which really the Spanish Inquisition was filled with suppression. Both authors make the point that history is always hidden within schools. Instead of teaching what exactly happened, events are sugar coated, downplayed, and sometimes not taught about. History is often taught from a bias standpoint instead of from the textbook and what actually happened. How are we going to prevent past horrendous events, if future generations don’t know how to avoid and prevent them?
ReplyDeleteBoth poems clearly convey that history has been presented to the authors in a biased way; such has been the case for hundreds of years, with people whose own political and social agendas, as well as natural human predilection for one school of thought over another, naturally and intentionally enforcing these ideals onto impressionable youth. However, the thing that I found to be most interesting about both of these texts is both the authors’ complete inability and lack of a desire to speak up, as well as their candid confessions of the fact that they did not do so. The authors (or their characters) clearly were sentient children, and even in school, knew what they were talking about and were aware that greater atrocities occurred and have the potential to occur in the future. Nonetheless, they refused to speak up. It is also likely that their peers were in the same boat, knowing but unwilling or unable to speak (as they say, the power of the flesh is greater than the power of the spirit). In any case, an important question then arises: Since the students clearly have their own thoughts and opinions, does it even matter that the teachers are biased and trying to indoctrinate the kids? And in that case, is it really so bad that they couldn’t find the courage to respond or stand up for the fact that the teachers were wrong to portray such important, terrible, life-changing and life-ending events through such rose-colored glasses?
ReplyDeleteThrough both of the poems the reader can see the inaccuracy of how history is being taught to the students. The teachers in both the poems find a way to lie about how the history came to be. In the first poem “southern history” the teacher makes the attempt to downplay the severity and harsh conditions of slavery. And again with the second poem “the history teacher” the teacher downplays the ice age and says that it wasn’t nearly so cold, just chilly. The major events in history that were mentioned in both of the poems were wrongfully taught to the students. The authors in both of the poems talk about how history is majority lied about in school and does not receive the justice it deserves. History being taught from a bias standpoint rather than a textbook prevents the future generations from having a full understanding of the major events in history and their importance.
ReplyDeleteIn both poems, history is explained as something that is downplayed and sugarcoated in schools as the two narrators encounter history classes that do not stimulate the students in any way or present to them the facts. In Southern History by Natasha Trethewey the narrator sits in class learning a very biased account of the Civil War. The narrator shows how pathetic the teaching is by adding in a side comment “this was senior-year history class”. There is a cynical tone throughout, with the comment that Gone with the Wind is a “true account of how things were back then”. In The History Teacher by Billy Collins demonstrates that history is taken at face value rather than explored and examined; the Ice Age is taught as a time of sweaters and the War of the Roses is taught as if it were fought in a garden. The narrator alludes to typical suburban life with “white picket fences” and “flower beds” in the time of the “Gravel Age”. This quiet, suburban life fails to be flavored by riveting stories of history; instead the boring life they live in their long driveways is only made more boring. Both poems exemplify that history class is not challenging, not intriguing. History is ugly, and rather than tell it like it is, schools choose the easy way out and teach about happy wars fought in gardens.
ReplyDeleteWhen teachers teach history, they become concerned with the impact the emotions will have on students, leading them to downgrade historical events. They believe that the innocence of children is important and should be preserved through simple context, “The slaves were clothed, fed / and better off under a master’s care.” (Trethewey 3-4) She notices the lack of historical context through the slave's treatment. The whippings, beatings and poor living conditions are ignored, and the belief that slaves “were happy” before the war is centralized. In Billy Collins The History Teacher, history only exists to educate students with insignificant knowledge. They are hidden from the real world. For example, when asked about the Inquisition, a time when Catholics were questioned for their religious beliefs, the student will reluctantly say that it, “was nothing more / than an outbreak of questions.” (Collins 7-8) History is not understood in society. People willing disregard the application or impact on their history and live out their normal lives, untainted by the horrors and true existent of history.
ReplyDeleteBoth poems illustrate how educators idiotically place preserving students’ innocence above teaching the truth. In doing so, teachers wilfully do children a massive disservice, feeding them lies, lies, and more lies.
ReplyDeleteI still remember learning in elementary school how slaves were sometimes put into barrels that had nails pounded into them, then pushed down hills. But never mind that –– they were still clothed and fed, and therefore “better off under a master’s care.”
Billy Collins puts it more in perspective with “The History Teacher”. The teacher trivializes major historical events with the intent of “protect[ing] his students’ innocence,” completely overlooking the fact that his students are not ‘innocent’. The students have already organized and targeted a common enemy, and bully the “weak and the smart”. This shows just how ridiculous it is that the teacher trivializes their history lessons when students have already been exposed to violence, and many are actively engaging in it.
In the first poem about the Southern teachings of slavery, we get a glimpse of what the Civil War must be taught like in the South. The teachers pretend to believe that slavery was a good thing and the North was being a bully by denying them the right to keep slaves. They view the Confederacy as a protest, in which the Southern people were merely trying to get their point across by telling the federal government how they felt. Everyone in the South knew what happened to slaves- that they were treated unfairly and they had no rights, but they all just pretended it didn’t happen so they didn’t fight about it.
ReplyDeleteFor the second poem, the teacher is explaining the events our history to small children. I know this because he thought to himself, “The children would leave his classroom, for the playground to torment the weak and the smart…” The teacher believed he was saving these children from knowing the horrors of our world, but he was actually inhibiting them from knowing the truth. By keeping the children in the dark, he is preventing them from being able to understand the world they live in.
Both authors are commenting on the fact that the teachers are ignoring their true job, which is to educate the children they’re teaching. Telling children lies, or twisting the truth, is not what is going to help them. Children need the whole story to understand how they feel about a situation and how it would affect their lives. Children learn the actual story from their position in society, which also means that they know that their teachers lie to them. This creates the lesson that it is okay to lie and cheat in the world. In my opinion, that is the worst thing you can teach a child when they’re young and learning the ways of the world.
Each of the presented poems make negative remarks about the way that war history is taught. In both poems, the teachers do not accurately teach their students about the history of wars and traumatic events. Each of the the poems use language to create a vivid scene for the readers, causing old memories of long lectures and uninteresting textbooks to resurface in their minds, and giving a rise to a negative connotation that matches to the negative commentary in both poems. The teacher depicted in the first poem reads directly out of his students’ textbook while teaching them. This was a scripted and flowery portrayal of history, not true to the actual sentiment of these historical wars and events that the students were learning about. To the students of the first poem, history was just a compilation of facts that they felt detached from; this is seen through the use of the word blur in the fifth line: “I watched the words blur on the page”. The use of the word “blur in this line proves that the scripted version of history that students had been taught for so long (even as seniors) caused them not to care about history. The history was not real for the students, and the biased retellings of textbook writers (and movie directors) gave the students a faulty perception of the past. In the second poem, the teacher tells his students lies about history in order to “protect his students’ innocence”. This poem also shows how the teaching of history holds great bias, as the teacher gives his own spin on history. However, the innocence was already being destroyed as the children fought and bullied others on the playground in between classes, and the use of the word “torment” displays this. The word torment has a rather painful and negative connotation, and it shows how the students on the playground were already used to the agony and suffering that people had experienced during historical wars. Ultimately, all history students are treated as innocent and immature, as the history taught to them is heavily biased by their educators in order to protect the students from the painful truth.
ReplyDeleteHistory is taught in such a way as to shelter children from the evils their ancestors committed and endured, as evidenced by both of the poems. “Southern History” by Natasha Trethewey begins by quoting a senior history teacher, who states that slavery wasn’t so bad. Although it seems like the narrator sees the error in this statement, she says, “No raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.” These short sentences reveal empathetically that the students know there is an error in what they are being taught, but they do not dare to contest it because of the time and effort it would take. The lie becomes personified by the end, an evil truth that must be guarded by teacher and students alike. In “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, the narrator contrasts serious historical events with understatements, such as “the Stone Age became the Gravel Age.” This is done to emphasize that teachers belittle historical events in order to save the students from losing their “innocence” and realizing the horrors of the past. This results in the students not realizing the seriousness of their own actions, which is shown by the imagery of bullying on the playground. Both poems remind me of a song from the musical “Hamilton”, in which the closing number is titled,“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” The song includes the characters coming to a realization that what is remembered from history is fully dependent on who is alive to tell it. History cannot be told by those who have suffered and died, because they are not around to tell it. Instead, the victors of the battle and those who live long in prosperity are left to tell history in whatever way they see fit. In a sense, the censored version of history which is described in the two poems can easily become the “true” version of history, because it is the version that is known and told. Therefore it is dangerous to teach history in this way, because the voices of those from the past are being silenced.
ReplyDeleteHistory is the collective story that encompasses mankind from the dawn of time till present day. Not all of history is pleasant and most would agree that certain individuals and events are a black eye to the human race. However to underscore the significance of these events, or to bias them in anyway is dangerous and arbitrary to the collective good. Southern History by Natasha Trethewey refers to a senior history class in which slavery and reconstruction is discussed. The poem states that slaves were 'happy' and 'clothed, fed, and better off under a master’s care.' This description of slavery is heavily partisan and boarders on deceit. The speaker uses short sentences, which reflect the simpleminded nature of the student. The History Teacher by Billy Coll is another example of how history is taught in a biased manor. Like Trethewey, Coll uses descriptive language show the absurdity of what the children are being taught. The fourth stanza is a good example of this,
ReplyDelete"The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan."
When one thinks about the significance of these events, the dynastic wars of England and the bombing of Japan in the second World War, it is an injustice to trivialize these events. In both poems, the events taught by the teacher are regarded as true. Nobody speaks up. This commentary made by both authors is for the reader to be mindful when learning about historical events. The authors are saying that it is dangerous to teach history in such a way, because those who forget the past are bound to repeat it.
Both authors use timelines to demonstrate the fallacies of the manner in which history is thought. Both narrators are concerned with their own personal time lines which enables the softening and twisting of past timelines. This this then enhanced by the mundane and brutal way in which characters interact. Their violence and complacency is reflective of the way negative things happened in the past and shows that they are not learning from the lessons of the past.
ReplyDeleteAccording to these two poems, history is not taught as the facts of past events, which is the very definition of the word “history”. Trethewey’s “Southern History” focuses on specifically America’s manipulation of the past to feel more content; had students, particularly white students, been taught to acknowledge the suffering of African Americans, they would feel guilty for what their ancestors had done and would realize the privilege they have had for centuries. In the poem, the textbook, teacher, and movie all work to teach the modified version of history, making it easy for the students to follow them and hide the truth. The questionable part of their falsification comes in the student’s statement: “a lie / my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I”. The speaker of the poem knows that this teaching is a lie, yet goes along with it anyways to believe what is easier. This same mentality is seen in Collins’ “The History Teacher”: the speaker is aware of the truth, yet claims that he is “protecting] his students’ innocence” by choosing not to teach facts. The teacher does not want to disrupt the kindness of the children, so he erases the violence and hardship of history in his teaching, just as Disney does in movies such as Pocahontas. While the teacher walks by “flower beds and white picket fences”, his students “torment the weak and the smart”; it is his innocence that he is protecting, not the children’s. This poem specifically focuses on the teaching of World History, which is why the speaker is the only source of censorship, whereas there were several factors involved in Trethewey's poem assessing American History. Regardless of what aspect of history, neither of these teachers have fulfilled their job of instructing the truth behind the events of the past. Their students are left to enter the world ignorant, suggesting that they will only repeat this cycle for future generations, leaving America blind to its own history.
ReplyDeleteThe authors depict in both poems that history is taught to have been gentler and faultless while in real life this was not the case. Collins uses unbridled sarcasm to show how ludicrous the manner of teaching was and then allows a switch of scene (to the children's playground) to demonstrate that the censorship is not helping anyone. Trethewey's piece juxtaposes this by demonstrating how little the students relate to or care about the subject and it not being enough for them to wish to hear the correct and true history of events. The naive children in this poem get very little out of the lesson, and much like the sheltered children from the other, will have learned nothing from our previous mistakes as a nation/global community, making history able to repeat itself.
ReplyDeleteBoth poets seek to highlight the problem with the way history is taught, in that it can be rewritten and phrased in any way to show any possible number of different morals to take from it. The poets use groups of people to represent a mentality, such as the silent children or the teachers, also the soldiers in the also poem. The poets use light tones of sarcasm in their restating of the teachers' words, an example being the Spanish Inquisition retelling or the Gone With the Wind being factual. Both poets have a tone of disbelief and disapproval, as communicated through their degrading descriptions and framing of their educators.
ReplyDeleteIn these poems both of the authors comment the problem of how easily people in the modern world can change history to be what they want it to be. Trethewey in her poem describes how high schools down south teach that everything before the Civil War was fine and that slaves were better under a master's care. How they lie in order to maintain their pride and not make their state's involvement in the confederacy look like a mistake. In collins poem he states how schools these days try to protect the innocence of the youth and simply make all the nastier events of history simply look rather quaint and meaningless. Such as how the author describes the "ice age" as the "chilly age." Collins uses sarcasm throughout the poem to emphasize his point. Both authors comment on how stupid it is to try and change history that is already written down in the books of history. It is foolish to try to lie or change the events of history. Both express a tone of disbelief at these attempts.
ReplyDeleteIn both of the poems the authors are asserting that history is taught with a bias and that it is “sugar-coated” so that people can better understand it. Students do not learn the full extent of the wars and the lives of the people in the past because many, especially kids as in Collins’ poem, are unable to handle the truth about the horrors of war. In Trethewey’s poem, history was told from a bias. They were taught that “The slaves were clothed, fed, and better off under a master’s care” (line 3-4). None of the students questioned this because they did not know better. The teachers would not teach them any differently because they would not be able to understand what the slaves had to face. The school may have even been in the south and so history was being taught that in actuality the south was in the right during the civil war and that the north was the problem. In Collins’ poem the children were taught lies such as that “The Rose War took place in a garden” (line 11) and that the Spanish Inquisition was nothing special, when in reality many people died during these events. The teacher wanted to protect their innocence, thus teaching them incorrectly about the world around them and what it has gone through. Schools are taught to ‘dumb down’ history in a way that make the atrocities less horrid. However with this lack of truth many of the events of the past are lost. It is said that history is doomed to repeat itself if people are not taught about it, yet students are still not taught the full extent of the wars and other events that devastated the world.
ReplyDeleteBoth authors of these poems point out that history is not taught accurately and with a bias perspective. Teaching history is difficult however because it is a recollection of past events and therefore, it is hard to be taught when it is not from a primary source. For example, a teacher in today’s time would never know the true atrocities of slavery because they were not around during the time in which slavery was a part of life. Southern History by Natasha Trethewey writes about the inaccuracy of the teacher’s lesson by stating, “The slaves were clothed, fed,/ and better off under a master’s care” (lines 3-4). The History Teacher by Bill Collins also shows how history is not taught correctly because he deemphasizes events such as the “Stone Age” by referring to it as the “Gravel Age” (line 5). Collin’s play on words exemplifies the poor teaching methods as well as showing how the facts of history downplayed when it is told by a secondary source.
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ReplyDeleteThe use of the interjectory phrase “he said” develops a tone which sees the teacher’s statement as wrong. The phrase “quoting our textbook” helps cement that the enemy, the misinformation, is coming from authority. Instead of directly refuting the misinformation, the author uses a point of view which implies that what was being taught was something horrible that should be stood against: “I watched the words blur on the page. No one raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.” This phrase also demonstrates the idea that truth is undermined by those who stay silent instead of acting. The lie itself is perpetuated by visual manipulation, by the image of a slave who is clearly mentally inferior than whites - with the alliterating “big mouth” and “bucked eyes,” the author communicates how convincing the image of the slave would be if the audience had not known the truth beforehand.
ReplyDeleteThe second poem details the extreme lengths that teachers go to in order to keep children’s minds disturbance-free and maintain a sense of constancy. The poem communicates these extreme lengths with multiple ridiculous euphemisms such as the bombing of Japan was just dropping “one tiny atom on Japan.” Furthermore, the diction of the poem is also euphemistic, using phrases such as “was really just” “was nothing more” to downplay the intensity of the events which are euphemized. And then the author uses an image of the children exhibiting bullying and violence and intensity to make the point that this attempt at mildening disturbing facts is ironically ineffective; the children themselves are already as violent or more violent than the events described. In fact, it is implied that attempts at purity might be the cause of their violence.
Both authors use vivid imagery of the history being taught and diction incriminating the way that history is being taught to convey the wrongness of such education.
Both poems attempt to portray the harsh reality of portraying history. Throughout the world history is altered, erased, and even ignored in order to suit a wide array of agendas. Natasha Trethewey’s poem with its regretful tone depicted how history was passed onto her generation in the American South. The author describes how apathetic she, as well as her classmates, were in being forced fed the “true account” of slavery when African Americans were,” clothed, fed, and better off under a master’s care.” This depiction is what Natasha described as,” a lie my teacher guarded,”with her constantly remarking in penitent belief that she never batted an eye against it. To push an agenda such as the greatness of the old Southern Way of life under slavery her teacher was, compared to what we have been taught, fabricating a false caricature of history. In Billy Collins “The History Teacher” the reader is presented a paradox between the agenda the teacher wishes to push and the reality of the situation. The poem reads that the well intentioned teacher was,” Trying to protect his students’ innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just
ReplyDeletethe Chilly Age).” Yet, in reality his students were far from completely innocent as,” The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses.” While trying to protect the innocence of the children the teacher failed to realise he may have dulled their ability to see hardship or understand how people may see right and wrong. In both poems the respective teachers are forcing a fabricated or subjective view of history in order to alter their students mentality. For Natasha’s poem the students will grow up believing in the Old South as a place of prosperity tarnished by the Civil War, and Collins's depiction will render the students both historically inept in their knowledge along with, for better or worse, possibly devoid of understanding suffering. People will grow up deprived of an objective view of history with beliefs that possibly are just a product of another’s agenda. As students as well as citizens of the world people around the world must realise that history as well as anything can be fraught with bias. We must be ever wary that human beings are capable of forming their own opinion rather than requiring an indoctrination into ones manufactured for them. Not to mention, we must also be aware that the history we are taught is not the entire truth. Each grade you go through is forced to teach you one subject and complete that for a deadline. For A.P. Euro we are quickly approaching the A.P. test and i could give an untold amount of lectures every single war we have along with will cover by the time of the test, yet that will never happen. Stories such as the fate of inmate 4859, a polish spy in Auschwitz, or the Medieval Ages, which we never covered thoroughly in previous years of history, will go unrealized.
Sorry for the multiple posts I failed to see multiple spacing errors.
DeleteBoth poems show history being taught by people wearing rose colored glasses. The first poem changes the realities of history in a way that is easier for people to swallow and in a way that no one will challenge because it is too difficult to face the harsh reality of the truth. the second poem shows history being changed and rewritten to make it politcally correct and kid friendly, though in reality it is neither of these things. The teacher is trying to protect these kids but isn't really protecting them at all as they go fight on the playground, having their own war far worse than they have ever heard of in a history book. He sees only the beautiful and easy in life, not stopping to see the need for the ugly and harsh realities of humanity. The second poem shows society trying to deny tragedy and violence on a large scale while ignoring it in their own backyards. The first poet is aware of the wrong they are committing by staying silent and accepting the lies they are being told, but society is happy with a politcally correct past simply because they want to be able to look at their history books and say, "See? We aren't all bad, even those in the worst conditions were happy and healthy!"People don't want to face the hard truths of the past so they are making the future even more dangerous and violent, like the children in the second poem, in comparison.
ReplyDeleteIn these two poems, the poets comment on how teachers feed watered down information to their students and how students accept the information without questioning “why it matters” or why an event took place the way that it did. History is an important topic to be understood so that we both can understand the importance of innovation and how to avoid catastrophic social disasters. The authors show both teachers as being more laissez-faire than anything: In “Southern History,” the teacher uses a film to convey his lesson and in “The History Teacher,” the teacher avoids teaching the ugliness of history by removing the responsibility to stay true to the facts. When the ugliness that occurred/ is still occurring is watered down and the truth is withheld, ignorance is promoted and these teachers are failing themselves and the students.
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