The History Teacher

The speaker is omniscient and unidentified. Their subject is a nondescript history teacher. They have access to both the teacher’s interior thoughts and to things of which the teacher is unaware. As a result, there is a distance created within the poem. This distance between speaker and subject allows the reader to think critically about the teacher’s motivations and actions. Collins does not explicitly condemn the history teacher; the speaker’s word choice and voice remain impartial and neutral. Instead, the reader must use the events of the narrative to come to a conclusion.

The poem opens with the speaker describing the teacher’s internal motivations. He is “[t]rying to protect his students’ innocence” (Line 1), though his actions are presented as quite humorous at the start of the poem. Yet from the beginning, Collins suggests that this motivation is silly and foolish as the initial historical sugarcoating are of innocuous and inoffensive events.

The teacher’s punning on historical events’ names creates a humorous tone. His first revision is to reimagine the Ice Age as the “Chilly Age” (Line 3). The Ice Age refers to a period where thick ice sheets covered large areas of land for long periods of time. Humans emerged during the end of this time period, but the name certainly does not come from “a period of a million years / when everyone had to wear sweaters” (Lines 3-4). The renaming to “the Chilly Age” (Line 3) minimizes something that most would not find harmful or upsetting.

In the same vein, the teacher changes the Stone Age to “the Gravel Age” (Line 5). This time period describes the prehistoric time when humans used primitive stone tools, which the teacher reimagines as being “named after the long driveways of the time” (Line 6). Like the Ice Age, sugarcoating this time period is likely not something anyone would think necessary, and it is unclear how these lies protect the students’ innocence.

While these first two lessons may seem innocuous, the third one removes all of the suffering and cruelty of the historical event he is teaching about. While he describes the Spanish Inquisition as “nothing more / than an outbreak of questions” (Lines 7-8), the Spanish Inquisition was a historical period of great cruelty and brutality. Starting in 1478, Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella helped create a judicial institution that they claimed was to combat heresy but was actually used to consolidate power. The Inquisition’s methods were infamously brutal and often carried out in secret. Torture was often used during interrogation to obtain false confessions, and the accused had no rights. Under the most notorious grand inquisitor, Torquemada, thousands were burned at the stake. Tens of thousands were killed during the forced expulsions of Jews and Muslims. The country was largely purged of Jews and Muslims. The Spanish Inquisition did not formally end until 1834, though the most infamous events happened during Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign and for a time surrounding 1604.

The teacher erases immense personal suffering. Historically, the Spanish Inquisition had lasting financial and cultural effects that ripple across Europe as well. The cruelty and violence against Jewish people also helps explain other historical and contemporary conflicts. By removing this suffering, the teacher prevents students from being able to learn from history and think critically.

This period of persecution and immense suffering is sugarcoated so extremely that the teacher has excised even the most insignificant conflict. The history teacher claims that people were simply asking, “‘How far is it from here to Madrid?’” (Line 9) and “‘What do you call the matador’s hat?’” (Line 10). His focus on the stereotype of the matador and the country’s capital are trivial and childish, as the teacher is imagining what will appeal to and be accepted by his students without much critical interrogation.

In the next stanza, the history teacher continues to falsify historical events with increasing stakes. His next lesson covers the War of the Roses. The War of the Roses was a series of English civil wars fought from 1455 to 1487 between the Lancaster and York families. These wars culminated with Henry VII’s ascension to the throne and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. This war led directly to the English Renaissance. Even with what could be considered a historically happy ending, the teacher tells his students that this event “took place in a garden” (Line 11), minimizing the violence of war in an effort to protect his students. The teacher’s next creation surrounding Enola Gay is even more fanciful. The Enola Gay is the plane flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets and Robert A. Lewis on August 6, 1945 that dropped the first atomic bomb. This event ended World War II and caused immense suffering for Japanese civilians. Yet the teacher states that the plane “dropped one tiny atom / on Japan” (Lines 12-13). This falsification not only sanitizes this historical event of any violence, but it also removes a chance for students to think critically about their own country. In addition, he reduces the War of the Roses and the dropping of the atomic bomb to only three lines, glossing over transformative historical moments.

At this point in the poem, the tone of the poem completely shifts from humorous and amusing to distressing. The poem’s omniscient narrator then describes things that the teacher is not aware of. The students are far from the innocent people the teacher wants to protect. The narrator pointedly calls the students “children” (Line 14) to ironically underscore the teacher’s illusion of these students as pure and innocent. Students “would leave his classroom / for the playground” (Lines 14-15), which meant they left behind the teacher’s fantasy world. The playground, normally a site of innocent childhood play, devolves into violence. The children “torment the weak / and the smart” (Lines 15-16). Their targets imply that the students are the opposite: ignorant and physically strong. This description suggests that the teacher’s desire to protect their innocence by withholding information has actually resulted in their cruelness and violence.

The teacher, left alone in his classroom, is unaware of what goes on outside. The speaker’s ignorance of what goes on outside is paralleled with the ignorance of his students. On the teacher’s walk home, he passes “flower beds and white picket fences” (Line 19). These symbols of an idealized American life [see symbols for further discussion] give the readers little tangible information about the setting of the poem. With the teacher’s tendency to fabricate and sanitize, the landmarks he notices on his walk may be a part of his idealization and attempt to create the perfect America. With the teacher’s narrow worldview, he may only notice the nice aspects of his walk home.

The speaker shares the teacher’s thoughts, describing how he is “wondering if they would believe” (Line 20) the next lesson that the teacher is preparing. This remark encourages the reader to think about whether they believe the lessons of others like the teacher.

The teacher’s most recent invention involves the Boer War. The Boer War took place between 1899 and 1902 in South Africa. It was a conflict between the British Empire and two independent Boer (or Afrikaner) states. The British sought to expand its empire and claim newly discovered gold. During this conflict, the British established concentration camps that resulted in over 26,000 civilian deaths due to disease. The teacher considers whether he could convince his students that the Boer War was actually just a bore, where soldiers “told long, rambling stories / designed to make the enemy nod off” (Lines 21-22). After seeing the effects on the playground, this final moment with the teacher reveals the full horrors of his pedagogy.

Only at the end of the poem does the full irony of the poem become clear. Not only is the history teacher not teaching students history, but the teacher’s omission and revisions made to protect their innocence contribute to their violence and cruelty. The problem of cruelty and violence and the wider implications of ignorance cannot be resolved without altering current practices, which the poem suggests is not happening.