History Class Begins Again
From the playground where they play,
call the children back to class and school,
teach the lessons they're told to learn
with methodologies as modern as
white-wall boards and pretty pastel walls,
tinted with happy-faces and Disney cartoons,
because the children are sure to better learn
this historical era round—how the many
records of the cultural past are designed, like
how the Persians crossed the hellespont and
tried to storm ancient Greece—not once but twice.
Yes, teach the children so they cannot forget,
how the Romans invaded Gaul and Britannia
and a hundred other places all around the
salty-sea called the Mediterranean, and if
Cleopatra had a palace in Cambridge, UK,
they'd have stormed that drawbridge as well.
So go back, back another time, another term,
quiet the restless children down, remind
them how it's hard to focus when the mind's
racing through the afternoon on junk food,
soda drinks, sugar and salty treats, and
point out how video games and cell phones
addicts the bored and cramps the fingered hand
and how noisy music damages ears. But
teach the most curious ones so they know,
once there rode a general on a gallant horse,
always in vigor with Macedonian youth, who
believed in bridging international cities, proving
that he, Alexander, could rampage his way across
the world and on until the Ganges River blocked
his way and his men finally stood and said—enough!
Learn methods that follow current theory so that
the learning curve flattens enough to allow even
the most bored students to get the message that
Napoleon fired his deadly cannons and spread
his visionary map across the European theatre to force
his continental point, and with his gleaned loot built
monuments that last to this day down on the Champs
Elysee'—all the way to the famed de la Concorde Place,
where one day those children from the UK, Canada
and the USA may stroll in summer groups, when
they do an European tour, after covid-19 gives
the world no more trembles and fevers to fear.
Don't neglect more modern news—how the ole
UK bombed the hell out of Suez, and the ole
USA trashed Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia
to no avail, as well, and, even more modern days
how a leader named Putin grabbed Crimea without
a fight. Yes, show that history is like broken record story—
how wars return like smoldering fires in each century's drought
and border frictions leap out like a plague's second wave.
And by the time the children dine in academic halls,
they should know better than their parents how nations
often operate behind curtains of hypocrisy—never
forget that infamous Balfour agreement of UK and France,
while nations go on waving flags of one-upmanship across
the world—how our governments struggle to maintain their
status quo, while bowing low to the capitalistic one percent
and that all governments seem corrupt in this:
serving themselves—keeping their overpaid jobs,
and building up their pensions to stow sure retirement;
therefore when the brightest students go on to graduate
school, let them research that politics parallels
the dramas of theatre, cinema, journalism; after all
the essence of storytelling is to create conflict, so
let us not forget what Orwell wrote in that essay—
"Human history is a series of actions and reactions."
That is—when one side acts, another side re-acts:
someone aggresses, someone defends—when citizens
walk in protest for their rights, protestors are rebuffed and
shot down by police and units of para-military. So now, quickly,
quickly, no need to wait another semester, call them
in from the playground where they play and run, wave
them in from the turf and fury of the football pitch and
the campus greens—history class must begin again!
Reed Venrick was formerly an English teacher at a Japanese university in Tokyo, Hama-Rikyu garden was his favorite park.