A few weeks ago a teacher was forced to retire because of an activity that he had his class participate in. He was an older gentleman who believed in an active and engaged style of learning. He put up two flags in is class room. One one side was a Union Flag, on the other side he hung a Confederate Flag He had the students split into two teams a Union team and a Confederate team. Each near their teams flag. They participated in a reenactment where they competed for points so they could earn a pizza party. A few students complained and even though he was a very popular teacher the school board decided to fire him. He offered to retire and they let him take that w3ay out.
This was a history course. It seems like a history course is the very kind of place that displaying a flag that now represents the confederacy would be appropriate. But the display of that flag offended a few people and action had to be taken.
Now in Charlottesville Va about an hour and a half from where I live the city council has decided to remove a statue of Robert E Lee and rename Lee park where the statue is located. Earlier it was proposed in the same town that they remove a quote from the University of Virginia founder, Thomas Jefferson, from administrative email because undermines the Universities message of equality and civility.
First of all I don't think the tax payers should be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove a ninety year old statues. It just seems like a waste of money.
Secondly we are losing our history here. I am sick and tired of hearing about hearing how people are offended by this or that. Look, I am not one who intentionally offends anyone. I think we should try to be as kind and loving as we can. But we should not try to hide from history because it is ugly or offensive or makes us uncomfortable. Just the opposite. We need history precisely because it does all of those things.
If I can't display a Confederate Flag in a history class, can I also not display a Nazi flag in class either. After all what the Nazi's did were about as evil as you can get. It might be offensive. If we cut out all offensive and disturbing material from our history courses then we will forget what led people down those dark paths and could head down them as well.
Also when we take down a statue of Robert E Lee because he was a confederate general and Confederacy believed in slavery and racism, we are taking everything out of it's historical context. Although I personally hate the Confederacy and slavery and what it stands for we must remember some other things as well. General Lee was such a well respected general that President Lincoln asked him to lead the union Army first. But Lee was a Virginian. In those days many considered there state as there country and the union simply as a union of different countries. Asking a Virginian to take up arms against other Virginians would be like asking an American citizen to take up arms against this country. I could not do that. And to defend Virginia against the union was like many today joining the army if we were being attacked by an outside power. We can't just breakdown history into these people good because they tried to end slavery and these people bad because they tried to preserve slavery. Remember that most of these people were born into this system and that is what they grew up with. We grew up in a different time with different values. It is dangerous to judge people based solely on our modern values. Historical context is so important.
The point is we need to remember our history, all of it, the good and the bad. We can't just cut out the parts we don't like. Then we run the risk of forgetting them and that is truly dangerous.
Lets show our love to all.