Start 'Em Off Young

This week we were introduced to a poem called “The History Teacher”, by Billy Collins, that showed a history teacher teaching his students about disastrous events; Instead of telling the kids the truth about what really happened, he completely changed them. Even after expending all his effort trying to maintain his students’ innocence, at recess they still went out and tormented other children on the playground. The teacher had good intentions; I mean everyone wants to keep his/her kids pure and safe right? But, at some point these truths will reveal themselves to these kids and they will be hit hard with the hand of reality. Children should learn about historic events, even the horrible ones. I know somebody will question, “Should we really teach first graders about the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust?” but it is not necessary to tell them the full extent of what happened, teachers can just merely say that many Jewish people died because a mean Nazi didn’t like them. They will still somewhat comprehend what happened. We need to face our demons in order to learn from them, how could we stay away from our mistakes in the past if we didn’t know they happened? We would end up doing the same thing as our ancestors did. It is better to start learning about these event at a young age.