But One Lesson in History

About 800 words or two pages

Keywords: history, debate 

In 22 years of formal education, I had but one course in US history.  I’m not sure how that  exactly came to be—and I wonder more on the extensive 22 years part than the one history course part. Why the one US history course part I know:  I read the book and took the US history exam at UGA, so then my obligatory history courses became more juicy elective classes which featured Henry marrying another wife (it was three Catherines, two Annes, and a Jane, right?) or Alexander the Great’s warring escapades through South Asia (there were concubines too numerous to mention here). 

The one US history course came in eighth grade, at a junior high right outside Washington, DC, and was taught by a little old lady from New York, Mrs. Rotkin. It was in the late 1960’s, and Mrs. Rotkin seemed about 84 years old then, but she implanted in our class a curiosity for how things came to be in history.  She did this by having many classes as a debate between at least “two sides.”  It was a forensics approach--and more than that--it was in reality us confronting ourselves instead of us being moralistic about figures from the past. We learned to explore what those people then probably thought about, and hence faced something about our own lives.

Even though I had been living in the DC area for a couple of years, having lived nowhere else but Georgia before, I still had the hint of a southern drawl.  Because of my twang, when it came to dissect the US Civil War, I got cast as the slave owner in the mock debates over that horrible issue.  Interestingly an African-American classmate had volunteered to take the slave owner’s side in the spirit of curiosity—truly a young man ready for the diplomatic corps—but Mrs. Rotkin instead gave the dreaded role to me. 

Thus, I began to prepare, already knowing something first hand of the Jim Crow South, but knowing very little about the slavery debate. There was not much to find on defending the owner’s side from a morality perspective, of course:  the biblical argument tilted toward slaves’ rights and freedom (Jubilee), and in fact the Middle Ages had basically eliminated slavery from Europe during the millennium of the Church’s direct social superintendency (AD 400 - 1400). By the way, that Old World’s slavery which was done away with was mostly about punishment, either booty of war or prisoners of debt; an ancient king as well as an ancient pauper lived but one battle or one debt away from slavery. After the Plague, it was the so-called era of Enlightenment and Age of Discovery that eventually restarted the despicable institution of slavery in yet an even more heinous commercial way, based conveniently--at least for the owning class--on skin color.

My eighth-grade self fretted over the upcoming debate. I was angry at the casting, but somehow had some trust in Mrs. Rotkin’s decision.  The debate came, and I yielded completely and immediately on the moral ground. But then I offered the only defense I could think of:  economics.  How willing were you, oh Northerners, to pay twice as much for cotton?  Did you boycott and wear only wool in protest?  And then I threw in the cost of war:  even though only a small minority of Southerners were slave owners, do you not expect all those living in the South to defend their land with vigor once an invading army comes?  Thankfully, I lost the debate, but got an A.  And I learned a lesson about looking for answers.

I remember one more lesson from Mrs. Rotkins’ class:  the student teacher disappeared.  I forget her name, but she seemed almost as young as we were, had long dark hair and dressed in the sort of hippie fashion of the day.  Mrs. Rotkin had some errand to run, so the student teacher filled in on a lecture about the contentious event of the time—the Vietnam War.  She was to prepare us for our upcoming debate assignment. The young teacher concluded the preparatory talk, wrote summary notes on the chalkboard, and started to assign the teams for the debate.  Mrs. Rotkin suddenly entered the classroom and glanced at the notes on the board and surmised what was going on. 

“Does this [pointing to the chalkboard] represent all you’re going to tell them?”  asked Mrs. Rotkin, and the young teacher nodded and said proudly, “Yes. It’s all very true.”

Mrs. Rotkin breathed deeply, fixed her piercing eyes on the student teacher, and stated loudly, “Maybe so, but it’s only one side of the truth.”  The student teacher retrieved her denim purse and left the room.  We never saw her again; she left having taught us but one lesson in history. It was not forgotten.

©Copyright 2023 by John P. Harrison. All rights reserved.