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The History Teacher Billy Collins Analysis

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The Culture of Education Ideas create the world. Ideas, from the murky unknown of our imagination or the onerous research performed over decades, is fed by the desire to build something. Ideas require no materials except that of the human mind and the will to paint the world around us. Ideas can build or destroy. Ideas can be squandered. This country was shaped through the idea of a better society in which people could have their inalienable rights protected. The American Revolution was fought against the closed-mindedness of society with its detached indifference to the well-being of its citizens. American history was shaped by revolutions, and the seed to every revolution was an idea. The most disturbing thing I observe in the modern …show more content…

Under the guise of tradition, teachers are able to instruct their pupils about a country without mistakes, and without truth. There is an insightful poem by Billy Collins about this form of good-hearted negligence in instruction called “The History Teacher”. He writes about an educator who “[t]rying to protect his students’ innocence/he told them the Ice Age was really just/ the Chilly Age, a period of a million years/ when everyone had to wear sweaters”. This satirical view of education really gives an uneasy credence to the philosophy of education that some schools in the U.S. have adopted. Not only does it lie about the true nature of our history, but it dumbs down its …show more content…

This is unfortunate, because it was 63 years ago that the court case, Brown vs. The Board of Education, labelled the “separate but equal” philosophy of education to be unconstitutional. Even though segregation is outlawed, there are more concealed methods of creating an unfair educational community. Wealthier areas are privileged with better teachers and learning environment, while areas less fortunate are doomed with a poorer quality of staff, supplies, and technology. This is a condemnation of these students, whose lack of a proper education will result in a cyclical motion of disengagement from education. In the past, education was used as a way to keep the class system in check by letting the rich be educated and allowing the poor to remain ignorant to their servitude. Today, this approach is softened, but still

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