While reading “The History Teacher” this week in class, I was reminded of something that I read in my eighth grade English class. In this particular class, we had to think about pretty deep things!(Well, at least for an eight grader) Our teacher asked us to find the answer to the question, “is ignorance bliss?”. We had to form an opinion on that question and write an essay after reading Flowers for Algernon. I thought long and hard and still, I am quite unsure about my answer to that question. I think I may have said that ignorance is bliss, but after reading “The History Teacher”, I think I have changed my opinion. The “teacher” in this poem euphemized every tragic event that he talked about saying, for example, that “the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age” making the children think that everything in the world was rainbows and butterflies. They were ultimately ignorant about the world around them, causing them to “torment the weak and the smart”, while history repeated itself. History is bound to repeat itself where learning is not present. The teacher may have thought that he was doing a good thing and helping the children remain innocent, but in reality the teacher was stuck in his fantasy with “white picket fences”, not even realizing the harm he was causing to the rest of the world. The use of a picket fence is to enclose things off and to protect someone and in this case, the "history teacher" enclosed the children's perception of the world, protecting their innocence in a harmful way.
I really like how your voice is apparent in your post. My sister just recently wrote the same essay on ignorance and bliss, and she agreed as well. I like how you connected two separate pieces together; this really emphasizes your credibility as a writer.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I really liked how you connected what you read in the past to "The History Teacher." I also really like the Martin Luther King Jr. picture; it fits really well with your post. Good job! :)
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