Message from cowen

[Anonymous]

Today's discussion on the Rape of Nanjing reminded me of a bumper sticker I had once seen that read, "I'd rather be historically accurate than politically correct." I think that often, especially with younger students, we tend to gloss over many of history's atrocities. Our students are very familiar with the injustices done by the U.S. to the American Indians and African-Americans, and to the Jews and others by Nazi Germany. However, they have very little knowledge of other human acts of cruelty and slaughter, save those they see on the nightly news.

Our job as history teachers is difficult because we have the task of trying to help our students make sense of the often-ugly past. We often walk the fine line between facts, perception (often more important than facts) and "appropriateness for classroom use." I remember many times thinking that a classroom lecture could come back and haunt me in the form of a parent complaint but I'm willing to take that chance to introduce students to a more complete narrative than just the one or two sentences in their texts. Just like today's lecture, one of my students will inevitably ask the question of why does man do these things to their fellow man, and just like Clay, I have to answer that I just don't know, but we can discuss some of the possibilities.

My sophomores usually come to me at the beginning of the year thinking the world is separated into "good guys" and "bad guys." I hope that by the end of the year, they understand that the world is filled with shades of gray.