What Having a Socialist Nazi in the White House Means for the Classroom
I am probably not alone when I say that I have a hard time taking GOP “socialism” rhetoric seriously. The same goes for right-wing attempts to equate Obama with Hitler. Apparently, however, I need to keep this rhetoric in mind when planning my classes, for it has entered my classroom in an unexpected way. In a blue book essay about totalitarianism this summer, one student explained nazism in terms of “socialism” and “big government.” There was no political intent behind these statements. The student simply drew on the language of everyday life, as students are wont to do.
This is a sad commentary on what rhetorical excess on the right is doing to our everyday vocabulary, but it also presents an opportunity. Without engaging in politicking, I can use this apparent linguistic and cultural deficit not only as motivation to be more thorough about how I teach socialism, nazism, and other modern political ideologies and systems, but also as an example for historical thinking. My instinct here is to talk about the use and abuse of history, which is probably what I will do. On the other hand, however, some of those who throw around the “s” word really believe that socialism is on the march in the United States. If I were to take such fears seriously, I would also use them to teach my students about how the meaning of language shifts and even mutates over time, sometimes meaning different things to different groups of people. This too would be a worthwhile lesson, although it would bring me closer to something that some students might perceive as politicking. I should probably take that chance.
Rise to the challenge and take the chance — please.
What students perceive as politicking in the context of the classroom, especially when they are first being taught to think critically about their everyday assumptions, isn’t necessarily politicking, even if the students perceive it as such.
The historian often needs to be on the front lines when ideologues are misrepresenting historical memory for propaganda purposes.
It is refreshing to see teachers taking their role has mentors seriously and not just as a job with a pay check at the end of the month. But we know that you are a minority. In our modern days, teenagers are overloaded by the medias, their English are learned not in class rooms but by rappers and texting lingo. Iphone,Video games, music, fashion trends are their instructors. I feel that social studies teachers have a hard task before them, because since the first genocide, when the world said “never again” to today, it seems that nothing much has changed. The majority of the population still doesn’t feel implicated to the issues plaguing the United States, otherwise how can we explain electing G.W.Bush for two terms. How is this going to be explain the the future generation. It seems that the word “socialism” and ” weapon of mass destruction” has the same agenda, fear.
Very interesting. Especially when it comes to the topic of language. I am in school right now to become an English teacher and I am a fan of classic literature so I can see, not only in my daily life but through what I read, how language has changed and is continuing to change.
I especially love when you touch on that awful thing, the “s” word. I simply love how that term has become this sort of label that the right slaps on something that they wish to fail. Kind of the way it was thrown on Obama’s health care plan.
I kind of feel that semantics are a very important part of conversation too. How can we, as people, communicate effectively if we do not agree on what the words we are using mean. Like when conservatives say that our country is founded upon Judeo-Christian values simply because some of our founding fathers use “God” every now and then. They fail to realize, or choose to ignore, that our founding fathers were deists which meant that they believed in God but not the church or its theology.
Anyway, nice blog, I really enjoyed it.