Iâm thankful for my 10th grade history teacher because:
âI have to teach the book.â He said. âYou have to read it and I have to give a test on it to make sure you know whatâs in it.â
âOkay,â we said. âThis is what school is.â
He also said âbut I donât have any rules that say I canât teach you more than one book.â
âBut this isnât English class,â we complained.
âNo itâs not,â he replied as he handed out photocopies of a different book I do not have the name of. I would learn later that he paid for the photocopies himself, because he could not afford to buy a set of books for us, and the school wouldnât help. We had to turn in the photocopies at the end of the lesson. Heâd done this for years, and the packets of paper were sets of folders containing well read photocopies and some pages were crumbly and heâd replace whole packets or pages in a single packet at a time. He had a whole cabinet full of these folders, broke down by chapter, out of a different book. Some of the packets included photocopies from more than one book, some news articles, a couple academic papers. We were not always required to read those, but we were promised extra credit if we did.
âWrite me an essay,â heâd say.
âUgh,â we groaned. âWhat about?â
âThe differences between whatâs in the packet and whatâs in your books.â
And we would. Heâd accept full essays and heâd accept a simple list of differences, but that was always an assignment. Point out the differences.
âWhich fact do you believe?â He would ask us.
âThe packet,â weâd answer.
âBecause they donât want us to have them,â weâd answer.
âGood,â heâs smile. âWith this chapter, Iâm not going to give you a packet. I want you to make your own packet based on the information in this chapter in your government supplied textbook.â
But we learned how to do some simple research, and we were told that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, but everyone that edited had to present sources. We had to come up with twenty pages worth of extra information on the chapter in our textbook. The textbookâs chapter was something like ten pages long. We had to do our essay/lists on what was left out/added/changed. It was a good two week long project.
âWhy am I making you do this?â
âBecause itâs busy work,â someone answered.
He frowned. âBecause one day youâll be presented something as fact and youâll have to decide if it is fact or not.â
âHow do we know the difference?â
âMaybe one day one of you will grow up and be able to give a simple answer to that question because I donât have that answer.â
âYou just didnât want to do the work to make a packet yourself, huh?â
He smiled. âThat is an advantage to having minions.â
And then he laughed like an evil vampire and we watched a movie.