歴史: History
One stanza into “The History Teacher”, and I had to go
back to the top and read it again. It seemed a little bit too ridiculous, that a teacher would need to protect his students
from the concept of the Ice Age, and hide it behind a million-year-long sweater
weather trend. I mean, people even made four
kids’ movies out of it!
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| Ice Age - a series of popular family films |
But as I continued to read along, the wry humor gave
me a feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, I wanted to laugh out loud at the
well thought out puns and jokes, but on the other, I understood the heavy
undertones of the supposedly lighthearted piece.
It’s quite obvious that Billy Collins is trying to
warn against protection against the ugly parts of history, that we need to show
children the consequences of them, lest (excuse me for the cliché) history
repeats itself. He shows it as some sort of a communication disconnect – the history
“teacher” is in class, thinking he’s doing the world a service by protecting
these children’s innocence, but the children then turn around and act out less
extreme versions of what they didn’t learn about on the playground, against “the
weak and the smart.” And while the children do this, thinking all is right with
the world, because they were never taught that all is not right, the history teacher turns his back and congratulates
himself on a job well done, utterly oblivious to the damage he has done.
It’s quite the vicious cycle. On the one hand, they
claim that we are “too young” to know about certain things, yet on the other, they
stress the need to pass down accurate history in order to prevent more
disasters (such as a World War III). And then they blame all the problems on
the world on the younger generation. But they forget – who was it who covered
our eyes as they had us roam the world? It’s no wonder we bumped into
a few poles.
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| Anna - you're too cruel to us. |
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