The Role of the Teachers
My high school memories are tinged with joy and sorrow. The Vietnam War was escalating; the school and its student body was a hive of heated hallway arguments. Was the United States justified in attempting to halt the spread of Communism or had it thrust itself unwisely into the middle of what amounted to civil war? Was all this worth the cost of so many civilian and military lives? With no one to monitor our discussions, opinions flew fast and furious, based, for the most part, on the opinions of parents or the peer group du jour. It was hard to get facts. Even if students did, they had no real frame of reference with which to interpret them. Fear of the draft or of dying in some God-forsaken jungle went pretty much unexpressed. Nightly news shots of dead civilians women and children became part of the American television landscape. The schools did not help us. Teachers avoided the subject like the proverbial plague, overly cautious, I assume, that any encouragement ...