Teaching History Means Teaching War

[BridgeTheGap]

Of all the epochs, events, and ideas we could study, war seems to grab a disproportionately large chunk of time in many classrooms around the country,” writes The Smart Set’s Dwight Simon, who’s also an eighth-grade history teacher at Epiphany School in Boston. “If violence truly is the spirituality of our society, then, I fear that we as teachers and students of history have become its theologians.”

Over the past few years of teaching, Simon noticed an unsettling trend, one that may belie a still-developing generation of war apologists-to-be. “ore voices in my classroom are willing to speak up for war’s noble purpose,” Simon observes,

its grand narrative, all-too-comfortably calculating away six- and seven-figure body counts, factoring away numerous tales of suffering, and rearranging variables to conclude that the end justifies the means, the sum is somehow greater than the piles of bodies and body parts. Out of violence comes redemption.

Not comfortable with his students’ one-sided approach to history, Simon tried to rearrange his curriculum and more explicitly teach the moral complexities of war.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Mind-Body/Teaching-History-Means-Teaching-War.aspx#ixzz1UjSMMdnv

[Uncle Joe]

1. Plain and simple, war is a failure of political leadership.

Thanks for the thread, BridgeTheGap.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. My pleasure. n.t

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I had a kick-ass 7th grade history teacher who took a lot of time to

tell us about the political failures leading up to the Civil War and the First World War. History never seemed so fascinating.

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. I had a high school teacher admonished for teaching us about the...

citizens protests of the First World War. She went beyond the whole "U.S. was isolationist and reluctant to get involved," and actually explored what that one line in our text book meant, socially and politically. Even back in the 80s our textbooks rarely spent much paper and ink on how and why we ended up in violent conflict. History was just war to war to war to war with a rah rah of U.S. industrial innovation in between. I wonder how much has really changed with respect to teaching U.S. history.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. My teacher amazed me with her collection of facts without the "benefit" of materials.

She knew her stuff cold.

To my knowledge, she was never taken to task by parents or the administration for doing her job. We were taught to read and research history, not to take literally what was in the textbooks.

BTW, we're friends on F/B.

[mckara]

4. War is an Extension of Politics

Simon is a history teacher, but not a historian!
Mr. Simon should familiarize himself with the writings of Carl von Clausewitz and his classic, On War. Further, Simon should note how often religion drove the politics of war. His observations are naively superficial.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

6. I don't think the two approaches are mutually exclusive. n/t

[Jim__]

8. "Not comfortable with his students’ one-sided approach to history ..."

I'm not sure what that means. Since he's the teacher, he should have some control over the students approach. Does their general approach come from previous history classes? Anyway, if he starts his students thinking, at least some of them will continue to think.

[swilton]

9. Read the article

As one who has been dismayed at the absence of peace studies as a subject in the social science curriculum, I support the argument.

The article, however, does not do the argument justice.... - 'Was the war worth it' - in the case of the Civil War boils a very complex question down into a sound-bite....Was the war worth What?? Freedom of African Americans - how would you define freedom - How would you define 'war' - vis a vis damage to civilian property, lives, social destruction of the southern US - etc., etc.

I also don't think that one 'case' i.e., the Civil War - and the answer to this particular question - really establishes a truth...Yes, it is an example but the debate on how to answer this question is still open.

[Stuart G]

10. want to know about the moral complexities of war...well. read on.

War sucks, kills, hates and is ugly beyound any kind of moral interpertation.
Oh, you don't think so..just show this little film to your class.

I did. 30 times. 6 years, 5 times each year. I cringe at the thought
(yes, I taught that war is wrong, that killing is wrong)..
32 minutes of the worst kind of hell immaginable..
Yea, 32 minutes.. that will deglorify, uglify and destroy the concept war is ok.

it is
Night and Fog..(oh, had if you haven't seen it, it is at many local libraries)
read about it for yourself..and read the first ten readers comments..please.you will know what I mean.
...thanks for reading this.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/

[BridgeTheGap]

11. When I was a kid, a t.v. program came on while I was doing the dishes, with a parental warning

that graphic images were included that might not be approriate for children. I was only one in the kitchen and I thought I was getting away with something being able to watch the upcoming program. It was documentary film of the holocaust and it shook me down to my young bones. My grandmother had left Germany in the the early 20s as a young woman and came to the U.S. Her father saw the writing on the wall and had all his daughters leave. He told them to never admit that they were Jewish and to convert to one of the christian religions. My grandmother became a catholic. After watching the holocaust program, I asked my grandmother about it. She got visibly upset, composed herself and told me that she had many family members and friends that she never heard from again, during and after the war.

[bhikkhu]

12. WWI is a prime example of that

where Europe had enjoyed many years of peace and prosperity, but there was no shortage of fond reminiscing of the glories of war, fear that a lack of war was leading to the degeneration of the races, theories that war was a tonic that gave vigor to the nations, and all such nonsense...

The WWI example is a good one, because everything went so quickly from prosperity and grandiose dreams to an absolute grinding hell from which nothing good emerged. Tuchman covers it best, I think, in her two books - "The Proud Tower" and "The Guns of August".