Our Job

One of the most embarrassing moments of my parenting career happened the other day. Unlike some of the more public parenting fiascos of my children's younger years (supermarket checkout aisles, church), this one happened in the privacy of my own home as my daughter and I were listening to the song Made in America by Kanye and Jay-Z. I was raving about how much I love the song when my daughter-after hearing the lyric "sweet Queen Coretta"- looked at my and blankly asked "who is Coretta?". I was stunned, horrified, and then right out embarrassed. How could my child know who Beyonce is but not Coretta Scott King?

My first response was to roll my eyes and mutter "what do you learn in school?" (grumble grumble) But then I realized; it's not their job-it's mine. It's my job to raise my child, both of my children, in a home that knows and understands the history of our country and the people who are important to it. And as I sit here on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I am reminded again how important it is that we teach our children those things we remember-- simply because they don't.
I am not sure how much twentieth and twenty-first American history kids learn in school today. I know when I taught and events from the last 20-30 years would come up, they seemed woefully uninformed. Challenger, Columbine, Rodney King, Princess Diana, Waco, and the first Persian Gulf War are all discussions we have had at my house because they meant nothing to my children. Even more, I remember in the classroom, teaching a lesson to freshman about the Kennedy assassination and their complete lack of understanding that Reagan wasn't President in the 1960's. I remember explaining the Oklahoma City bombing to my children as we drove to Texas one time because we saw the sign for the memorial; the name Tim McVeigh had no significance to them.

We live in an information age, kids can Youtube anything they want. When I taught the Kennedy lesson, they could youtube the Zupruder (which I probably spelled wrong, showing I am no history expert) film or look up autopsy pictures. But it can't teach them what I learned when my parents told me about how the nation mourned. They can Youtube film of the towers falling on 9/11 but only we can put into perspective what it FELT like to watch it that day. The feeling that the world had just turned upside down, the confusion and fear we felt. Kids may enjoy their day out of school on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; but it our job to be sure they understand the work of civil rights is never done. They can find the picture of the firefighter carrying the baby from the Oklahoma City rubble, but only we can explain that an American is the person who parked that truck in front of that building and daycare.
The next generation-one I spent a lot of time with until I recently left the classroom-catches criticism because of their lack of repsect. But how do we expect them to have it if we don't teach it? This is a generation which has been raised with antibullying and Safe Schools laws, without the context to understand it. My children may know the lockdown procedure at their schools, but really have no understanding of what happened in the days before we knew what to do. It is my job to teach them. I believe it is my job to teach my children what terrorism really is, as they have never known life without a National Terror Threat (or as I call it the Color Thing). That terrorism is an idea-it is not about the way a person looks or what religion they practice (i.e. Tim McVeigh) but more about what they are trying to accomplish. That even though I am not old enough to remember a time of separate water fountains, I will never tolerate bigotry, prejuidice, or racism in our home. That my job as an American is to be part of the process, so that is why we stand in line to vote.
Is it the job of schools to teach history? Of course it is (thankfully, as my knowledge of the Civil War is limited to Denzel's seech in Remember the Titans), but it is ours too. As parents, friends, uncles, aunts, or just adults in this world it is our job to live it and show we have learned from it. Start tomorrow. Chances are, you know someone who may have been alive but too little to remember (or even not yet born) on 9/11. Tell that someone what a hero really is; explain why your neighbor or friend is in Afghanistan or Iraq; tell them wy there is a memorial in a field in Pennsylvania instead of another federal landmark; or look at an old picture of the New York skyline and explain how it felt the day it changed. It's our job.