The Importance of My Least Favorite Subject

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lying (v.) : saying things that aren't completely true but should only be said for a positive purpose

Ever since the third grade, I’ve always disliked history class. From memorizing the difference between all the crusades to learning when Rome was built, it all just seemed beyond pointless to me. Just last year I only saw history class as a place to test your memorization and to fill your brain with useless dates and dead people, but after this week of English class, I’ve realized that it’s so much more. In the poem, The History Teacher by Billy Collins, the teacher’s attempt at oversimplifying history in order to protect his students’ innocence, proves to only backfire and hurts them more in the end. He makes up stories like that "the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters." Instead of keeping the children blissfully ignorant, failing to educate them on the real meaning behind historic events just left them to the possibility of repeating history. If students today grew up learning lies and weren't properly educated on the past, then we could make the same mistakes others made thousands of years ago. We would be taking a huge step back and have to learn the same lesson again for mankind.
In this poem, the "history" teacher was only lying to protect. This is why I believe that lying is a matter of intent. People lie on the daily, but the majority of the time, it's about small insignificant things. In my mind, saying things like "this tastes great!" and "yes, I love your dress!" even when you don't really mean it, doesn't necessarily count as lies because you mean them all in a positive way. On the other hand, lying about something in a negative way, no matter to what degree, is always a bad thing.

Comments

  1. Echiu20September 16, 2018 at 9:47 PM

    I really like your point that if we don't teach history accurately, mistakes can be repeated. I think that one of the main reasons history started being taught in schools is so that students can learn from the past and move forward. I agree that although the teacher did have good intentions, it may end up having negative results, as we saw that the children were already being aggressive towards others on the playground.

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