My Dad is fond of telling a story about me getting in trouble in my 8th grade U.S. History class taught by Mr. Callahan. How he’d sit up at the front of the class and spend the entire time reading straight from the book. Me, being a pretty active kid, getting bored and doing whatever I could to disrupt the class.
He was, I think I can say now in fairness some 20 years later, an awful teacher. I can remember our text book, a giant tomb, filled with historical paintings of the civil war and words like “emancipation” in highlighted in bold text and defined in the back. Surely we had to memorize the definitions word for word and write them on some sort of quiz.
I think of things like this; evidence of a relatively poor middle and high school education, when I download lecture series by The Teaching Company.
I’m perpetually trying to compensate for guys like Mr. Callahan–and Mrs. Goddard, my 9th grade World History teacher, who now that I’m older and know about such things, must have been just a year or so away from retirement.
I’m being a bit negative here. What I’m trying to say is that I have a soft spot for history, and especially living over here in Korea, I spend some time thinking about my home country and what makes up its psyche.
The American Mind is a series by Allen C. Guelzo, an esteemed professor at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In it he details some of the ideas, some of which are philosophical (many of which are of course theological), that have shaped American history. He gets into the The Transcendentalists, Pragmatism, Conservatism, the influence of the Enlightenment…and perhaps Mr. Callahan’s favorite; emancipation.
It’s good stuff. Guelzo is an expert, even if his lecturing style is a hammy for my tastes. But the info itself is fun to absorb and doesn’t drag, even when discussing people like Jonathan Edwards or the Puritans. One of the better Teach Company series I’ve listened to.
August 5, 2007
American Mind
May 6, 2007
Hirohito
Recently watched Horror in the East a documentary about Japan’s role in World War II. Not being a WWII buff by any means, I was struck by the fact that Japan’s emperor at the time; Hirohito, was never prosecuted by the Allies, and basically allowed to continue living as he always had, in his palace, until he died of cancer in 1989.
Here’s a photo with is wife near the end of his life:
A few weeks before I saw The Sun a film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov, which details Hirohito’s doings in the days leading up to the Japanese surrender.
Sokurov’s film doesn’t portend to be precisely historical. But in the film Hirohito is shown as kind of a relic, although thoroughly human. He’s also shown as someone very much in control of the Japanese military during the war. Toward the end of the film Hirohito meets with General Douglas MacArthur, who finds the emperor a little peculiar and cute.
I think the film’s point was to explain why Hirohito might have gone unpunished.
Sokurov has done other historical films. One, called Moloch, was about Hitler. Again, Hitler presented much more as a human than the maniacal image most of us have of him. Both are great films.
April 26, 2007
George Jackson
I lived in downtown Oakland for five years, but never knew much about George Jackson. I’d heard of the Black Panthers of course, but it wasn’t the sort of thing they spent a lot of time on in Bay Area history classrooms just 10 or so years after the fact.
I can remember, working at the newspaper in Oakland, hearing names like Angela Davis said with a ring that made it clear it wasn’t something to bring up ’round the ol watercooler either.
I’ve just started but I’m looking forward to getting into this history. One of the parts in my book concerns a Korean guy who succombs to family pressure and tries to find a wife through a bridal agency. At one point I had the idea to have him be a bookish sort, more stimulated by Black American culture than his own.
Now that I’m learning about this I’m considering pulling that part out of the book, reworking it with my original idea, and turning into its own thing.
As has often been the case Bob Dylan checked in with a stinging opinion on Jackson shortly after his death.
Dylan-GeorgeJackson