I reflect back to some of what I learned in high school. I remember sitting in Mr. Watter’s class while he introduced us to terms like dogmatic, which at the time I thought it was a cross between dog and automatic. He also went into some detail about some of our social struggles in our history. Subsequently, he mentioned Senator Joseph McCarthy and his unrelenting search for Communism, even where it didn’t exist. Why is this unusual? He taught English, not history, but he introduced me to relevant topics about our history.
I sat in my American History class while we discussed a wealth of different elements of history. The class ran through the entire year, not just a semester. Mr. Barnes, whom we affectionally called ‘Coach’, taught that class. Naturally, we talked about the Civil War and slavery, but we simply couldn’t omit it. It is an inextricable and undeniable part of our history. We discussed World War II, but the Japanese internment camps only got about five minutes. Even upon this terse mention, it was filled with rationalizations about how afraid we were. We consequently barely mention about how those Japanese, most of them United States citizens, were unjustly impacted.
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