Short, But Sweet: Anthem for Doomed Youth

Ever sigh and say, “I wish I could teach poetry but I … a) can’t find anything good, or b) don’t have the time.”? This occasional series of posts will focus on specific poems that I like and have even used that I find to be both engaging and amazing.

Anthem for Doomed Youth
By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

I’ve written before about my affinity for Wilfred Owen’s poetry, and seeing that today is the anniversary of the end of the First World War, I thought it appropriate to contemplate another.  ”Anthem for Doomed Youth” isn’t a poem that I’ve used in class, at least not yet, but I think that in the great struggle we seem to have with the ability to make texts “relevant” for our students, this is another that wins out.  Well, depending on where you teach.

Reading 9/11

The front page of The Washington Post from September 12, 2001. Image courtesy of The Newseum.

Around this time of year, there are a good numbers of articles and blog posts about how to teach about September 11, 2001, especially to a generation of students that doesn’t know what happened or may know what happened but doesn’t have much of a memory of it.  It’s an issue that makes total sense–eleven years passing may not seem like an incredibly long time to someone like me who was 24 on that day and is 35 now, but for the high school sophomores I teach, eleven years ago was preschool.  Being the father of a kid in kindergarten, I know that when you’re four or five years old, you don’t fully comprehend what’s going on in the world, so I can’t expect to have my students share deep reflections on where they were that day.

I have always felt that it’s necessary to teach about that event, and teach it in a way that is more than simple lip-service patriotism or a special moment of silence or whatever your average school will do on an otherwise ordinary September 11.  As an English teacher, doing so isn’t necessarily in my domain; after all, this is probably the jurisdiction of a history teacher.  But the journalism teacher that’s still in me has always felt the need to really take a look at the day’s events because it was such a huge media event, and one that really tested the mettle of those chosen to report the news in the way that a presidential election (which is more or less the same story every four years) doesn’t.

Virginia’s changing of our SOLs actually provided me with a chance to do so these past couple of years, as the Dept. of Ed. has added a standard that addresses “media literacy.”  My colleagues seemed hesitant when we first talked about it, but I had the opposite reaction–in fact, my eyes probably lit up when I thought about how I could crack open my old journalism lesson plan binder and see what I could repurpose for English.  I created a small unit for my advanced English class that I called “Reading 9/11.”  A condensed version of a unit that I once did with my journalism I students a number of years ago, I set out not to study the history of the event, but the way its story was told.

My goal in crafting the unit has been to get my students to consider where information comes from, and the quality of those sources.  Added to “What happened?” and “What do you remember?” were questions like, “What makes a good source?, “How is this being reported?,” “What is the value in reading different types of sources to look at the same thing?,” and “How have these events been interpreted?”  This, hopefully will lead to maybe not a full understanding of the events of the day (which requires a significant amount of research), but at least an understanding and appreciation of the scope of 9/11.

I took five days of class for work and discussion, although I assigned all of the reading ahead of time (I tend to do this in advanced English so that my students have the opportunity to plan and manage their time), and tried my best to take a back seat to their own “discovery” of the events (with some guidance on my part–I am still allowed to do that, right?).  Here’s how it broke down:

From the Bookshelf: American Graffiti

Very often when I’m figuring out what to teach, I find myself going outside of the classroom English textbook. In this feature, I take a look at those reading selections (or in this case, a film).

I don’t think that my students get enough pop history.  Oh sure, they’re living in a culture that is like one perpetual self-referential loop, but whenever we discuss allusion and I bring up allusions that are so second-nature in our p0pular culture that you don’t even need to have read or seen the source material to get it (i.e. Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, Scarface), I get the same dead silence, tumbleweeds, cricket chirping, and perplexed looks that I would have gotten had I asked them to write an epic poem in Sanskrit.

It’s kind of a shame, really.  Pop history is so important to our culture, especially the culture of teenagers beginning in the late 20th Century because it’s the type of history that does have a direct impact on their lives, especially because it bleeds over into I guess what you’d call “anthropology” in that you can’t study the popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries without also looking at the societal shift to the suburbs that started after World War II.  Alas, I teach a course whose curriculum is supposed to be centered around “World Literature” and I don’t get a lot of opportunity to cover a topic such as this.  But every once in a while, I do, especially this late in the school year … and that’s how we’ve come to George Lucas’s 1973 film, American Graffiti.

Okay, I didn’t completely come to this film with some mission to try and teach history the last couple of weeks of school.  Showing the film in my advanced English class came from the AP 11 teacher’s summer reading assignment: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.  This is a book that I absolutely love and when I handed out the summer reading assignment, I told them as much (in fact, I think I said something like, “I don’t read war novels, but when I do, I read The Things They Carried.”  Allusion!).  It’s only one of two books about war that I actually really enjoy (the other is All Quiet on the Western Front, natch) because it’s so gritty and realistic and also has some great stories contained within.

I wanted to approach the book somehow without teaching it and without completely frying the class, which already has a final term paper due for me in a couple of weeks in addition to state exams and finals.  So, instead of pulling out yet another reading assignment or an extended history lesson and research on the Vietnam War (I figured that the book would pique their curiosity enough anyway and that they would seek out information on their own), I took a different approach and went for prologue.

Not to give Baby Boomers too much credit here (which is the cardinal sin if you’re a member of my generation), but the Vietnam War is still a part of our national conscience and our culture.  When both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq got underway, there was plenty of flag-waving, but the spectre of ‘Nam still loomed as the benchmark of military failure, the scar on a generation that took so long to recover from its wounds (and still chooses to lay them bare for future generations to learn).  And aside from that, the culture that my students currently embody as teenagers in modern-day America has its origins in the culture of my parents.  So, in order to get that point across, I showed American Graffiti.

One for Memorial Day

At the Vietnam Memorial

By George Bilgere

The last time I saw Paul Castle

it was printed in gold on the wall

above the showers in the boys’

locker room, next to the school

record for the mile. I don’t recall

his time, but the year was 1968

and I can look across the infield

of memory to see him on the track,

legs flashing, body bending slightly

beyond the pack of runners at his back.

He couldn’t spare a word for me,

two years younger, junior varsity,

and hardly worth the waste of breath.

He owned the hallways, a cool blonde

at his side, and aimed his interests

further down the line than we could guess.

Now, reading the name again,

I see us standing in the showers,

naked kids beneath his larger,

comprehensive force—the ones who trail

obscurely, in the wake of the swift,

like my shadow on this gleaming wall.

by jinguangw. Used with permission under creative commons license.

I’ve never known why I have always been so interested in the Vietnam War and the Vietnam War-era.  It’s probably some combination of the fact that my father and uncle were both in ‘Nam back in the mid-1960s and I am a kid of the 1980s, the decade where it seemed that every other movie being made was about the war.  Or maybe it’s because I’ve always known that this war was different than the others that we’d fought in the 20th Century, especially when it came to the homefront and since I’m the product of a couple of Baby Boomers, I have always had an interest in the history of post-WWII America and the rise of the suburbs to prominence in our society (I also watch Mad Men).

Alas, I don’t teach much literature about the Vietnam War, or about America, because being a sophomore English teacher, my curriculum’s focus is on “world” literature (though I admit to playing fast and loose with that).  I do, however, teach one of the best war novels of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, and when I do, I not only bring out poetry from the World War I era, but I make sure to share the above piece by George Bilgere, which was introduced to me by a student a couple of years ago who read it for our Poetry Out Loud competition (and killed it, too).  It is a great way for me to link to literature about war that involves my students’ own country and relatively recent history and also drives home the point I repeatedly make about Paul Baumer–he is only a couple of years older than the students in my class who are reading the book.  Plus, there’s the fact that Paul Castle is the big man on campus … THE guy.

“That’s who wound up going to war and dying,” I tell them, trying to toe the line between getting the point across and saying anything that would get me accused of “liberal indoctrination.”  For some of them, this helps get the point across, especially since I teach in a school where the idea of the “big man on campus” is still a concept that’s very alive and well; for others, it’s in one ear out the other, as it is with everything, I guess.

But on a holiday like this, it’s important to remember what’s lost in war and the last stanza of the poem speaks to that “larger, comprehensive force” in a way that is so succinct and yet so complex.

Conversations and Conspiracy Theories

Lee Harvey Oswald in an infamous photo taken before he supposedly assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

“Is that non-fiction?”

I looked up from my book–Stephen King’s 11/22/63–to see a man sitting on the other side of the waiting room at Merchant’s Tire.  It was 7:30 on Saturday morning and I had been up since 6:00 because I’d wanted to make sure I was early enough to be the first in line to get my wife’s car inspected (it’s a sure sign of getting older–you camp out for car inspections and miss the boat on concert tickets).  I glanced at the cover and half-wearily replied, “No, it’s a novel.  It’s about a guy who goes back in time to try and stop the Kennedy assassination.  So far it’s pretty good.”

He nodded and turned his attention back to the local news on the waiting room’s television.  After a few moments of silence, he muttered, “They couldn’t have prevented that anyway.”

“Yeah,” I replied, half-heartedly, trying to get back to reading.

“It was a huge conspiracy.”

“I’ve heard a lot of people say that.  I guess when you have a conspiracy like that, you need to keep it secret, so it couldn’t have been prevented.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think …” he began.

I closed my book.  I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, even though I tend not to believe most of them.  I think I just like a good story.  He began to talk about the Bay of Pigs, which I’d known about since the sixth grade when I did a report on JFK for a biography project, but then went into elaborate detail on something called “Operation Northwoods,” a rejected plan in which the CIA would commit acts of terrorism in the United States and blame Fidel Castro.

Yes, it really happened, kids.

I guess considering my post the other day, I should relate this particular story because it’s hilariously appropriate …

“Just found out Titanic really happened!’ The tweeters who thought world’s most famous shipwreck was just a film”

RMS Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15 1912, after being struck by an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

But for many of the younger generation, the ship is more familiar from the 1997 film about its demise starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

So … I guess this could be one of the wonderful side effects of the “Well, if it’s not relevant to them, they’re not going to want to learn about it and if they’re not going to want to learn about it, you shouldn’t try to teach it because they should decide what they want to learn because your role is no longer to impart knowledge or actually be a teacher but to be a warm body in their presence because you are not innovative and your union has manipulated their lives to put you there to abuse them” attitude that I seem to read a lot about?

I don’t know, but I’m definitely laughing.

If it happened long ago and far away, can’t it still be relevant to them today?

In recent days, I’ve read a number of posts on various blogs that address a common talking point these days, which is the idea that we need to remember that students are the center of education.  In some places, the writers were simply reinforcing the idea of student-centered learning and better student engagement, something that I, along with quite a number of my colleagues strive for (and admittedly struggle with from time to time).  But in others, there was this underlying tone that it’s not just that students are the center of learning in the classroom, but almost that they’re the center of the universe in some way.  Said one person about cell phones: “If you can’t hold their attention in competition with a cell, that’s not their problem.”  Said another: Attention is the new currency in our world and you need to offer something in exchange if you want me to listen to you.”

My reflexive response to this (i.e., my getting defensive … and come on, we all do it) is, “So, do I have this teaching license for your entertainment? I didn’t realize that I need to be singing and dancing.  I know, I’ll add more fart jokes to tomorrow’s lesson.”  But that’s not much of a constructive response, to be honest and no matter how bratty the insistence that I keep my students’ attention as if I am some sort of entertainer, there is a kernel of truth to it.  If it weren’t true and I did not have to keep them attentive and engaged, I wouldn’t have to see the words “relevant” and “authentic” in every post I read.  In other words, what does it matter to a student if the material that I am covering is not important to their everyday lives, or who they are, or isn’t something they can use right away (via social media, of course)?  And mind you, I take all of these things into account when planning units and lessons.  I, just like so many of us, want my students to leave the class feeling that they’ve grown in some way or learned something.  I thought of that when I was planning the unit that I’ve just started teaching.

The only problem is that we’re reading Night, and that’s about something that happened half a century before they were born.

I’m not being flip here.  I’ve been bothered by this ever since I picked up the book to revise the unit again this year, for a few reasons.  First, I chose the book and therefore I’ve already made my unit teacher-centered because I am not letting my students take control of their own learning and letting them read what they want.  Second, I’ll be spending time on an event that happened long ago in a country whose government no longer exists and will more than likely never exist again (a government we defeated, btw).  And third, we live in a free society where that couldn’t possibly happen, so how it possibly be relevant to them?

Some of the answers to that are obvious: we learn about The Holocaust so it can’t happen again.  We need to make sure we continue to fight intolerance and hatred.  We need to understand the horrors that humanity is capable of.  But again, I hear that voice that demands authenticity and tells me that I’m wrong for foisting this upon them because it’s not relevant unless they decide it is.

Now, in three years of teaching Night, I have always had students who latch onto the book and devour it, probably because they have an interest in World War II history or they have grandparents or great-grandparents who fought in the war, much like I did (my paternal grandfather was a turret gunner on a bomber), and while The Holocaust happened a while ago, it is still fresh enough in our society’s mind for students to know how important it is.  But what happens as the decades go by and survivors pass and it becomes not a memory but a watered-down recount in a bad textbook that’s been whitewashed by Pearson because the Texas Board of Education says so?  And how do you keep the murder of six million European Jews relevant to a predominantly white Christian population that might shrug it off and say “Eh, it can’t happen to me?”

Here’s where I will sound like a teacher-centered teacher, and I’ll try not to sound too pompous, but this is one of those subjects that I feel that whether in history or English class we need to always teach because even if students themselves don’t think it’s relevant, it is and we need to show that it is.  We haven’t started the actual book yet; instead, we’ve talked about antisemitism, the rise of the Nazi party to power, and propaganda so that not only do we talk about what happened but why and how it was capable of happening on such a large scale.  Because when you really think about it, the scale of The Holocaust is astounding and even mind-boggling, something that you don’t really understand until you look at a map and see the entire system stretched over several countries.

But again, that voice … “So what?  It won’t happen here.  It won’t happen to me.  It’s not relevant.”

Because it’s not hard to make Night or The Holocaust engaging, but making sure that we don’t forget why it is always going to be important and relevant is going to continue to be the challenge, and as self-righteous as it sounds, it’s one I think we should all accept, no matter how teacher-centered that seems.

Patriotism vs. Reality and Edgar Guest vs. Wilfred Owen

"At close grips with the Hun, we bomb the corkshaffer's, etc." Two United States soldiers run past the remains of two German soldiers toward a bunker. File from Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons

By the time I have a substitute this coming Tuesday, my advanced class will have hit the halfway point of our latest novel, Erich Maria Remarq’s All Quiet on the Western Front.  This is the fourth year I’ve taught the novel (though the first time I’ve taught it to an advanced-level class) and I’ve always done the same thing when we hit the halfway point, which is take a short break and cover some World War I-era poetry and some other material from the period–both literary and historical.

The reason for the break is practical because chapters seven and eight of the novel are massive and while I gave the class a reading schedule when I passed out copies of the book a few weeks ago, you can’t assume that everyone sits down and goes and read the novel that very night.  It’s also a break designed to be helpful to better understand the war itself, as while Remarque’s voice is virtually unmatched, I always like to show other perspectives.

Enter the poetry of World War I, which has gotten a bit of the short shrift in recent years, especially as there are many high school English classes that barely touch poetry at all, and those that do tend to go with the classic Brits or modern Americans.  Don’t get me wrong, I love modern American poetry–a couple of weeks ago, this same class made a valiant effort at breaking down Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”–but what I love about some of the poetry I use from the First World War is that quite a bit of it comes not from people who had MFAs from Ivy League schools are were part of the Iowa Mafia, but from actual soldiers (much like Remarque and his novel).

On Tuesday, I’ll have the class complete a worksheet that goes along with five poems.  The first is what I consider requisite when reading the poetry of the First World War:  Lt. Col. John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”  The other four I picked because they are by two poets who are in direct contrast with one another:  British soldier and author Wilfred Owen and American “People’s Poet” Edgar Guest.  The specific poems I’ve chosen are Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “The Last Laugh,” and Guest’s “The Things That Make a Soldier Great” and “Thoughts of a Soldier.”

Now, I’m sure that the word in the last paragraph that made some people recoil in horror and maybe even go all Scanners was “worksheet.”  It is the bane of every “forward-thinking,” “technology-enabled,” “living in the 21st Century” teacher who would see a day off as an opportunity for learning and would set up a lesson wherein their classes watch their appendectomies live than run off 120 worksheets and leave them for a substitute.  I actually see the value of the worksheet here, however.

The class that will be reading these poems is extremely discussion-based.  We talk.  A lot.  And that’s awesome.  But sometimes I think that sitting quietly and writing down your thoughts on something is just as valuable as the back-and-forth with a classmate or a teacher.  The questions on the worksheet involve the expected exploration of literary devices  and how well they either get the poem’s message across or affect the audience, but toward the end I have a couple of questions about whether or not my students like the poems, as well as their opinions on war and patriotism.