Do we put students in a bubble?

We sometimes worry that our students are in a bubble too close and too protected to let them see beyond. The truth is that we are all in a bubble of some kind. The bubble is one of context and time. The more they are removed from the event the clearer they will see.

It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment…For those thousands in the South Tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.*

Martin Amis, writing in 2001, makes the clear point that 9/11 is a defining moment in history, but that moment is just one of many that have shaped the concept of modernity during the last decade (and a bit).

The question is how we teach the near present events that shape our world. There is a generation going through our schools now who don’t remember the horror of watching a plane vanish into the second tower or never saw the debris fall from the windows that we later learned were people fleeing from the flames to the unknowable, incalculable chance of a miracle that never came. It was a morning that sparked a raging beast into action. It was a morning that eventually led to an invasion of first Afghanistan, then Iraq; then maybe the chance of a different world creating a climate for an Arab spring. Historians will argue about the events of the first years of this century for centuries to come and this is half the problem. We only now agree on the reasons for and the impact of the French revolutions; and are starting to get to grips with the communist risings in Russia. How, when these events, so far away, are now only just intelligible, can we begin to grasp the complexities of modernity?

The ability to step back and see a bigger picture is a talent that we want all of our students to have, but how do we train them up? How can we get them to see the impact of these events, or even their own actions in a wider context? Exposure is one way, show them multiple angles, multiple ideas; show them the realities of the political extremism; let them meet the serving policeman who saw ‘Desert Storm’, or the family forced to move from their homes because of pit closures. Expose them to the harsh light of the ‘ground zeroes’ and let them slowly back away until they start to notice the shadows cast by those moments.

In those dark recesses they can then start to pick apart the real meaning of these terrible events which are, in the end, only the punctuation marks in the greater historical narrative.

http://howtoteachandlearn.blogspot.com/

 *M. Amis, The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 (London 2008), p. 3.