"Facing History" at South Boston High School
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Bowling Green State University ScholarWorks@BGSU English Faculty Publications English 2-1993 "Facing History" at South Boston High School Thomas Klein Bowling Green State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/english_pub Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Repository Citation Klein, Thomas, ""Facing History" at South Boston High School" (1993). English Faculty Publications. 2. https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/english_pub/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at ScholarWorks@BGSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@BGSU. "Facing History" at South Boston High School Author(s): Thomas Klein Source: The English Journal, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Feb., 1993), pp. 14-20 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/819697 Accessed: 05-08-2014 14:06 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.1.62.221 on Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:06:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Facing History at South Boston High School Thomas Klein Few who lived through the 1970s can forget "Southie," South Boston High School. Names like school-board member Louise Day Hicks, Mayor Kevin White, and Judge Arthur Garrity get etched into the mind, not only because the forced busing that brought them infamy tore up a city for almost a decade but also because anyone at that time concerned about racial balance must have har- bored a little guilt that it was Boston, and not a town closer to home, that got the brunt of disrup- tion. But no one seemed to express that guilt, that shared responsibility for our racist history. Whether it deserved it or not, Boston developed a reputation as a bastion of bigotry, but that is not what attracted me to the city for a semester of study and teaching. A student in Boston in the formative days of the various human rights movements of the early 1960s, I wanted to return to see what had become of the city crowded with colleges, of Boston's richly ethnic neighborhoods, of its shamed past. Some years before, I had attended a week-long workshop at Facing Historyand Ourselves, a nonprofit foundation that has trained over thirty- thousand teachers to teach about racism and prej- udice and has reached half a million students. Based in the Boston area, Facing Historyasked me to join its twenty-five staff members, in part be- cause I had for several years taught courses in Ho- locaust and genocide literature and history. A major part of my stay in Boston would be spending two days a week at Southie, observing a sophomore Facing History class taught by English teacher Virginia Ordway. I would be able to come to some definitive conclusion, I thought, regarding the legacy of the terrible forced busing years, at the same time that I figured out why and how Ordway 14 English Journal This content downloaded from 129.1.62.221 on Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:06:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions brought the Holocaust, as a case study of institu- More on Facing History tionalized hatred, bigotry, and racism, to fifteen and Ourselves National Foundation ethnic students. Since Facing History is Facing History diversely can be reachedat 16 HurdRd., Brookline,MA 02146, in social-studies classes, I also wanted usually taught (617) 232-1595. The organization sponsors numer- see how this curriculum is in an to taught English ous workshopsannually around the country, and it class, see the stories, novels, discussion and writing publishes books and resource guides that would be activities focused on the study of language and helpful to teacherswishing to teach about racismand literature. In particular, I set out to determine genocide. Several books have been written to specifically whether it is to take students away from possible help English teachers present the literature of the their stress-filled lives, transport them sixty years Holocaust. back into our past and into the terrible story of the Langer, Lawrence. 1975. Holocaustand the Literary Holocaust, at the same time providing a sense of Imagination.New Haven:Yale. for, solace in, and of their own respect acceptance study describesan "estheticsof atrocity" lives. the success of such a unit would de- Langer's Clearly, as it appears in major poems, novels, memoirs, pend on how sensitively a teacher would balance stories, and playsof the Holocaust. His approach the conflict between the particular and the univer- chronicles violence committed with no apparent a sal, the demands of such a and reason, requiring leap of the reader'simagina- complex painful tion in order to a with content and the needs of students. accept complicity atrocity. The familiar brace one Rosenfeld,Alvin. 1980. A DoubleDying. Bloomington: images upon entering Indiana UP. Southie-the giant steel entry doors, the guard Rosenfeld the authors, and at the entrance, the lavato- analyzes significant major sign-in padlocked themes, styles,and of Holocaustliterature. ries five minutes between classes genres (opened only The double dying of the title refers both to when they can be monitored), the steel grates on the millions of persons who died and to an enno- windows and doors, and the darkened, locked li- bled conception of humanity that was lost in the Holocaust. brary (where, of course, the AV equipment sat). Yet, the school betrays itself; I found myself trans- Roth, John, and Michael Berenbaum. 1989. Holo- fixed with the school's view of Boston caust:Religious and PhilosophicalImplications. New panoramic York: Harbor, the islands and water in of Paragon. sparkling, spite One of the best and most current of the fortress that the halls. anthologies atmosphere envelops Holocaust literature, this book offers a succinct and Such a mixture of beauty sadness would char- historical overview of the Shoah (for many the acterize my next three months there. preferred term for Holocaust), as well as essays, As I waited for Ordway's Facing History class to memoirs, and short fiction, from such important writersas Bauer, Levi, begin, I met Joe, one of four security guards who Hilberg, Borowski,Lifton, DesPres, Langer, Wiesel, Rubenstein, and work the halls at Southie. A large and imposing Fackenheim. man in his fifties with a Irish/Bostonian ac- heavy Strom, and WilliamParsons. 1982. Holocaust of Margot, cent, he regaled me with stories the 1974-78 and HumanBehavior. Watertown, MA: Intentional period-six-hundred police officers on the streets "Educations. and in the school, one on each stairway and Availablefrom Facing History and OurselvesNa- landing, an FBI helicopter overhead, a stabbing tional Foundation,this anthologyof materialsfor that closed the school for two weeks, all the result teachers was written to accompany the teachers of an Irish/Italian/Polish rocked workshops on teaching about genocide, racism, neighborhood and the Holocaust which has con- a law that demanded racial balance in the FacingHistory by city ducted over the last fifteen years. Its readings re- schools. Of course, the suburbs were exempt from flect the latest scholarshipon the Holocaust and such a demand, and that fact, probably more than trace the roots of prejudicein our lives. any other, incensed most Bostonians (Anthony J. Young, James. 1990. Writingand Rewritingthe Holo- Lukas, 1986, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade caust.Bloomington: Indiana UP. in the Lives of Three American Families, New York: Thisstudy describes the processesby wbich historical Random). memory worksin Holocaustdiaries, memoirs, fic- dion,poetry, drama, video testimony,and memorials. The neighborhood that Southie serves is still Youngholds thatwhile the ?facts"of the Holocaust overwhelmingly Anglo, but the high school hardly reflects this. It is presently 36% African American, (Continuedon p. 17) 26% Latino, 10% Asian American, and 28% Anglo February 1993 15 This content downloaded from 129.1.62.221 on Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:06:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American, numbers which almost exactly match Many students openly resisted the lesson, de- the breakdown in Ordway's class. Clearly, Anglos nied that they had ever given in to peer pressure. have fled to other schools under a modified choice Alex, for example, answered he would never be a plan. The racial tensions left in the school sug- victim of peer pressure because all his friends are gested that a program like Facing Historywould be "retards."He got the giggles he might have sought welcome, at the same time that it would require although, as I got to know Alex better and discov- balancing the needs of two very different kinds of ered how alert he was, I thought there might have cultures. been some small truth in his sarcasm. A few re- Fifteen students sat in clusters by race and gen- sponded more thoughtfully. John wrote, der on first was the my day. Ordway starting Facing When I was a kid last summer some fellows I know unit and wrote on the board, "Describe one History from around the way asked me if I'd like to sip on a time you were a victim of peer pressure.