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Billy Collins The History Teacher Analysis

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The poem “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins has a greater lie than “The Death of Santa Claus”, in its intention to save the innocence of students. It is necessary to tell the truth when the lie is destroying students future and breeding ignorance. To begin, in this poem the history teacher is trying to protect the innocence of his students by simplifying most historic allusions to make them sound friendly and less important. For example Collins writes, “The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions...” (Collins 7-8). This is a lie because the Spanish Inquisition was not a period of questions but a period of religious intolerance and brutality. Not only is this lie preventing students from expanding their overall
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This is only one of the five ways that the history teacher deceives the children by emitting false information to them. The irony lies in the fact that his purpose as an educator is to relay only accurate historical information, with the hopes that children retain the information; in spite of that, the history teacher does the inverse. He is releasing misleading information and at the same time, exploiting the children because they are only becoming more ignorant by his

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