Historical Coup D’Etat

A teacher called a radio station and complained about the lack of a proper program. When it came to writing a term paper, all the students had to do was just copy from their source and that was all. There would be no rewording or assimilating the information so as to answer any questions with their own information. There would be no need to refer to any historical references either.

Strange that I had heard this just before seeing an old film from 1999, “Teaching Miss Pringle” with students teaching a teacher a lesson. The students actually caused injury to their history teacher and then bound her so as to keep her from reporting them. It all started because one of them was seen with a copy of the final exam. This is supposed to be comedy, dark most probably, because of the serious violence no doubt but I thought about how students have risen in power not only to question the teacher’s approach but also by being violent.

Is the answer to student discontent then by giving them answers to their tests or by excluding historical facts altogether? I have heard of historical texts being rewritten to suit certain political regimes. What we are doing is almost the same: children are not being encouraged to remember past details to which they can base their present knowledge. It is as if we are robbing them of a chance to know what their roots are.

As adults we can laugh a the comedy of the film but the reality is that we are indirectly encouraging kids to seek other methods to solve their difficulties in applying themselves to an assignment, and that is by cheating and being uncivil. At the same token teachers are kept in position because of their seniority and not because of their abiliity to teach. That is what was at the root of the student upset in the film and is a cause in real life.