When I was in middle school, we studied the Civil War. Ms. Cohen was our teacher, and she was strict. Super strict. I think we had a nickname for her but I can't remember it. She called everyone "Hey Buddy." Not "Buddy" or "Bud," but "Hey Buddy." And it was most definitely not a term of endearment, as in "Hey Buddy, quit making noise in the hall. I am trying to teach a class here!" "Hey Buddy" was code for "asshole." She would point at students with her middle finger, which to 8th graders is both really funny and highly annoying. Did she know she was doing that? I bet so.
We didn't like her, but we respected her. She was militant at times, yet we sensed she cared about what we learned. This is leaving me now perplexed.
Ms. Cohen was a fervent believer that the Civil War was over state's rights. I remember her yelling at us, telling us we'd flunk is we every said the Civil War was fought over slavery.
"Never, ever say the Civil War was about slavery," she said many times. "It was about State's Rights."
If there was one thing I learned that year, it was that.
What strikes me interesting now is that numerous articles are coming now saying, yes, the Civil War was fought over slavery. See this article from The New Yorker.
Duh.
We were kids just learning about the Civl War and we knew the obvious: it was about slavery, and we had to be taught otherwise.
Why did we let ourselves be fooled? I don't know. I just trusted Ms. Cohen, who probably trusted a textbook. Did Ms. Cohen believe this herself? I bet she did, but nor did I think of her as one who would be interested in being an oppressor (except to her students.) She did not strike me as inherently racist or biased. In fact, my guess is that she was part of two groups that were persecuted. She often told us about her vacations with "her sister."
Nevertheless, she stuck with this "State's Rights" mantra. I wonder what she thinks now. I don't know if she is still alive -- she might be. I wonder what she thinks after years of teaching students history to come up wrong. To years of being in the closet perhaps, and then to be free. And all in the same week.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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