We saw the movie Defiance on Saturday. It’s really a brilliant movie and we both enjoyed it. I thought both Daniel Craig and Liev Shreiber were terrific as the Bielski Brothers who chose to resist the Nazis instead of tagging along like sheep to the slaughter.

Two movies, Valkyrie and Defiance, of two rather interesting point in history have me thinking back to the history classes I had in high school. I feel cheated, somehow. My knowledge of World War II, when I left high school was that we won, ALL Germans were evil, Hitler killed himself and no one tried to stop him, and ALL Jews were pacifistic people who didn’t do a thing to help themselves.

A bit wrong, I’d say.

History was boring, in school. If it wasn’t a one-sided re-hashing of current events, then it was a skimming of world history that did little to enlighten me as to where we, as humans, had come from.

I would have given anything to have learned, in school, about the stories of ‘Operation Valkyrie’ and the ‘Defiance of the Bielski Brothers’. One failure, but one triumph; yet both a wonderful illustration of what’s best about humankind.

Not a lesson you’d find in a high school history course, I suppose.

I did have one high school history course that went into fascinating depth in one particular point in history: my Civil War History course taught by Raymond D. Ham. (Mr. Ham, if you’re out there somewhere, you were a greatly, underappreciated teacher, not by your students, but by your employers.)

Mr. Ham took us step by step through the Civil War. The reasons it started, why it was such a significant point in American history, and what it meant to the slaves, free men, and citizens of the US and what it meant to us, today.

Mr. Ham was one of those teachers who expected to find adults who were genuinely interested in learning something in his class. We were treated as adults and addressed as adults (I was Miss Pribek, hah!). His class was considered an elective, along with Drama and Music. I remember that there were three chuckleheads that very first day who expected to slide by in his class. He tossed them out.

I don’t know what kids run into with today’s history classes. I just hope that they have access to at least one teacher who was like Mr. Ham.

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