This weekend, in case you missed it, marked the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. It also made James Cameron a bunch more money thanks to Tinanic 3D box office returns and it revealed that many people had no idea that the movie had been based on a real event.
While I’ll admit my initial response was a facepalm, I had to re-think that — especially after some discussion on Facebook that followed Shane’s blog post on the subject, questioning the education system.
My standard knee-jerk reaction in response to revelations of widespread ignorance of a fact or an event is to shrug and blame The System. “Oh, it’s just not part of the curriculum.”
But then, I thought, why should it be? Why should one event be more important than something more recent? Why should the curriculum be restricted to covering things that one generation found important/significant. In fact, I’d argue the opposite: the curriculum needs to adapt in order to stay relevant. We expect science teachers to adapt to changing ideas and interests, why not social studies? Personally, it killed me to go through the same lessons about the voyageurs and fur traders year after year after year — I’d have been excited to have learned something about other eras in Canadian history or — hey, here’s a thought — American, European or any other world history.
Then there’s the other side of this: I’ve never bought into the idea that education stops at the classroom. Kiddo learned about the Titanic through books, first. Specifically, the Magic Tree House #17: Tonight on the Titanic. That led to her asking for the companion Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #7: Titanic and then the Eyewitness book. Her cousin loaned her Titanic and we’ve probably watched a half dozen documentary shows on the subject. Oh, and when we were in Vegas, we did manage to take in a traveling exhibit of Titanic artifacts; that was kinda cool. So, I’d say her knowledge on the subject is pretty well rounded and she never got one tiny bit of it from the classroom. Nor should she have.
So, let’s step back from the knee-jerk accusations of what’s missing from the education system and, more importantly, let’s stop criticizing younger generations for what they may not know about events that happened (long) before they were born.
There are so many angles from which to approach a response to this post, and this situation, that I scarcely know where to begin. I may as well start with full disclosure: I am an educator in the public school system in the United States. I currently work with elementary school students in the second and third grades. In previous years I’ve worked with fourth graders, and I spent two years working primarily with middle-school students. Through all the years I’ve been teaching, EVERY SINGLE YEAR, I have at least mentioned the RMS Titanic in relation to one topic or another. Most years since I’ve been working at the elementary level I teach a brief unit based on the Titanic story during the month of April, to coincide with the anniversary of the sinking. I use the Magic Treehouse book. I use diagrams and vocabulary sheets. One year I had the students create paper model dioramas of the ship — that was fun! Well, it was fun for me, anyway. The event SHOULD be exciting, even to today’s jaded kids, so I try to leverage the excitement and drama to teach kids other stuff they don’t know. (How about basic vocabulary, for starters, like “propeller.” To the kids I’ve worked with, I have to explain that it’s “the spinny thing on the back.” Then I invariably discover that they don’t know what the “spinny thing” on the front of an airplane is called. The six-year olds, okay, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The ten year olds, though… d’oh!)
My point here is that Shane’s blog post makes an inaccurate assumption that because a handful of social media addicts haven’t heard of a century-old shipwreck, there’s a failure in the educational system. Why doesn’t he point his finger closer to home, at the parents who don’t teach kids anything about anything! Perhaps he should use a broader brush, and make a point about a society as a whole that does not value history. Or how about blaming those blogging dummies who are doing such a poor job of using new media to educate and enlighten the ignorant masses.
Maybe there’s just too darned much stuff to know now. There isn’t enough time in a classroom day to teach, or even to mention in passing, “everything worth knowing.”
Like “Kiddo,” I learned everything I know about the Titanic on my own. I first heard about the passenger liner colliding with an iceberg when I was in the third grade, and through third and fourth grades I was practically obsessed with the Titanic story. This was long before Cameron’s epic film, and long before Bob Ballard discovered the wreck. I scoured the school library for books about the Titanic. There weren’t any. The closest thing they had was a young reader’s history of the Coast Guard, which included a chapter on the Titanic. I remember eagerly reading that book after school, first the Titanic chapter, and then the rest of the book. I learned that the SOS Morse Code had only recently been adopted in 1912, and following the Titanic incident SOS became the international standard distress call. I learned that prior to the Titanic disaster, when “wireless” was relatively new, most ships equipped with radio did not maintain a full-time radio operator. Following the disaster, round-the-clock radio monitoring became standard procedure. Prior to the wreck there was no organized approach to tracking ice in the shipping lanes. This changed following the Titanic sinking. I learned a lot from that one little book. Later I discovered Walter Lord’s book, “A Night To Remember,” in the public library, and I learned that there was a movie based on the book. I saw “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” on television; I watched that boring (to me, as a kid) movie musical because there was a scene with the Titanic in it. This was pre-DVD and pre-video tape, when the only way to see a movie was to hope that it would show up on broadcast television some day. Eventually I saw “Titanic” with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I got to see “A Night To Remember” on a PBS telecast.
I bugged my teachers at school with Titanic questions. Other than brief responses to my annoying little-kid questions and help from the school librarian finding that one book about icebergs, I learned nothing about Titanic in my classes. It was a personal interest that I pursued, and that I shared with my friends, whether they were interested or not.
Schools today are not very different than they were decades ago. There are certain things that should and must be taught, like basic arithmetic and basic reading. Teachers try to inspire a desire to learn and a curiosity about the world in students, but each kid is different. Most kids don’t seem to care about anything beyond video games. Yeah, I know, I sound like a cranky old fogey when I say that. I’m sure that when I was in school teachers thought that it seemed like most kids didn’t care about anything but … . Schools don’t teach about the Titanic because they don’t have TIME to teach about the Titanic. Stuff has happened since then. Stuff has happened since I was in school. The space shuttle program began. One of them blew up. Another one blew up. The space shuttle program ended. Those towers in New York blew up. Mt. St. Helens in Washington state blew up. A nuclear reactor in Russia blew up, and one in New York melted down. A QUARTER OF A MILLION PEOPLE DIED in the Indonesian tsunami in 2004. How much of this is covered in school? Which of these subjects merits classroom time? One boat full of mostly rich people sinking a hundred years ago, or a quarter of a million mostly poor people drowning in a tidal wave, which is worth remembering? In the grand scheme of things, the Titanic, while interesting, isn’t that big a deal, and teachers are too busy “implementing the current ‘best practices'” (don’t get me started) as defined by local, state, and federal bureaucrats to give it much thought, let alone classroom time.
I teach in Hawaii. I find that many students DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AT PEARL HARBOR. Uhm… a giant war in which millions of people died started there? You can, like, see the tops of the ships FROM THE PLAYGROUND AT THE SCHOOL? Don’t your parents teach you anything? Don’t you kids, like, watch TV and stuff? Believe me, I bang my head against the wall — not a figure of speech, sometimes I have to do it out of frustration — when I realize, on a daily basis, HOW MUCH STUFF THE KIDS DON’T KNOW! I try to fill in the gaps, I try to instill a desire to CARE about… ANYTHING!
Do kids care about Titanic? This year, my second and third graders don’t. I was disappointed. I mean, 100 year anniversary, right? It’s all over the TV, right? I’m sure there are a few kids, somewhere, who care, but I haven’t met them. Do kids need to know about the Titanic? Probably not. Does it matter? I dunno, but dig this li’l story: when I was taking a few advertising classes in college, graduate level classes, one of the girls in class was stunned… STUNNED… to learn that the “indians” on her ice tea bottle represented American colonists dressing up like indians during the Boston Tea Party. “I didn’t know they dressed up,” she exclaimed incredulously. Yeah, this chick was planning to go into media and advertising. This chick is probably creating the media content we’re all seeing today. This chick is the reason kids don’t know about the Titanic or anything else historical. If the media gatekeepers don’t know stuff, how can the rest of us learn stuff?
The ignorance is nothing new.
I learned a lot from TV when I was a kid. Those old Bugs Bunny cartoons are full of historical references. “But I AM Napoleon!” Who’s Napoleon? Why is the Napoleon guy so tiny? Why are the guys in the white coats dragging off the Napoleon guy? There’s a lotta stuff you gotta know in order to understand Bugs Bunny cartoons. That was the stuff I talked about with kids I played with. Some things I didn’t recognize until years later: “oh, THAT’S what that Bugs Bunny joke meant!” People from the 40’s or 50’s probably shook their heads at the astonishing ignorance of “important” facts by my generation.
What does this have to do with Titanic? How about, if you don’t know about Titanic, or other similar historical trivia, you miss out on a lot of funny stuff. “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” one of my favorite movies, is, to me, hilarious! If I knew nothing about history, the “whoa, dude, excellent” exclamations would otherwise wear thin rather quickly. Instead, the movie is filled with subtle little delights from beginning to end… all of them based on history. Okay, maybe not all of them.
“Dude… that’s your MOM!”
“Shut UP, Ted!”
Ignorance about the Titanic is nothing new, by the way. Back during my third-grade Titanic obsession, my favorite joke was:
Q. What do you get when you cross the Atlantic Ocean with the Titanic?
A. Wet.
HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
I told that joke to the mother of one of my friends. She looked at me like I was an idiot. “What’s the Titanic?” she asked. So you see, there’s nothing new about Titanic ignorance.
Not only was the Titanic story dramatic when I was a kid, it was mysterious. Nobody knew the exact location of the shipwreck. No one had set eyes on the ship since it disappeared below the icy Atlantic waves in 1912. When Ballard began his search for the ship, there was actually a race. There were other people searching too. That was the last “major drama” surrounding the Titanic: which rich adventurer would find the wreckage first?
Ballard found the ship. National Geographic published awesome photos. Telly Savalas hosted a TV special featuring loot recovered from the Titanic. OMG, does anyone remember watching that show? It was lamer than Al Capone’s vault. Titanic artifacts went on international tour. More expeditions, more photos, more books… and then The Big Movie, followed by a “real life” 3D IMAX documentary.
If anyone out there doesn’t realize the ship isn’t real, they aren’t paying attention. This ignorance has nothing to do with the school system. In fact, Titanic overload in popular culture may have become so extreme that people tune it out. With so much exposure, there’s no mystery left. What’s so exciting about a big, rusty pile of rubble sinking into a barren mud flat?
Cable television “science” channels today run programs showing footage of Tyrannosaurs fighting with fire-breathing dragons, narrated exactly like any other nature documentary. Are dragons real and dinosaurs alive, or is that rusty old shipwreck a digital animation? Who can tell the difference? The divisions between speculation, fact, and outright fantasy are so nebulous it’s difficult for an undiscriminating viewer… or a seven-year old kid… to say for certain what is real and what isn’t. Especially if their parents don’t know, either. But the dragon fighting the dinosaur is more exciting to watch than a rusty old boat sitting there… rusting.
Of course I’m a little bit sad that many people have never heard of the Titanic or do not realize the ship was real. I’m more saddened, however, that the first response by many people, when yet another supposedly “widespread” incidence of youthful ignorance makes the news, is to blame the schools and to blame teachers. Blaming teachers for all manner of social shortcomings has become the norm. Criticizing teachers is socially acceptable. Never mind that many kids eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at school. Never mind that federal law protects students who kick, hit, spit on, and verbally abuse teachers. Never mind that parents can’t be bothered to teach ten-year olds how to tie their own shoes. Every shortcoming in every student has become the fault of the public schools and the fault of teachers, including, apparently, a failure to recognize the social, cultural, and historical significance of the Titanic.
Ask a First Nations or an African American how significant the Titanic is to his or her cultural history. If they say it doesn’t matter, blame a teacher.
Whoever “Shane” is (apparently he’s a guy who considers the rest of us to be “dummies”), he’s welcome to spend a week in my classroom. If quality of education can be evaluated by how much kids know about the Titanic, I’ll put my money on my second-grade special education kids rather than his SEO-obsessed blogosphere pals in the Twitterverse. Oh, but Shane, fair warning: if you’re gonna spend time in a second-grade special ed classroom, you’d better be ready to defend yourself against a broomstick swipe to the head; just another day-to-day job requirement in the life of a slacker public school teacher who is remiss in not teaching his students about the Olympic and the Britannic.
Thanks for the post, Cheryl, and for re-thinking your initial “knee-jerk” response. You know, if librarians were doing their jobs, people would KNOW about stuff like the Titanic! 😉
Gee, how do you *really feel*? 😉
Thank you for your very heartfelt and well-argued response to my barely-coherent blog post in response to Shane’s initial “thinking out loud” post. I don’t think I can respond to this appropriately at this time of night… but wanted to say “thanks; I’ve read it; and I’m thinking.”
I… Probably wasn’t thinking when I wrote… Whatever I wrote up there. It was late. I was tired. I’m cringing at the thought of retreading it, so I think I won’t. So, pay no attention to the man behind the cyber curtain ….
Nonsense. Your response made perfect sense coming from your perspective as an educator!