“Give this a chance,” I urged myself as my gorge began to rise. I was watching a young woman pretend she hadn’t heard a classroom full of fifth graders return her greeting. She stopped dramatically in mid-stride, raised a hand to her ear and asked them, “What did you say?”

From one perspective, I should’ve long ago developed a tolerance for this kind of thing. I’d heard it inflicted on my son, Riley, and his fellow students before by a wide range of adults, including the principal at their public school, a camp counselor at a “working farm” and a docent at a “hands-on” science museum.

But the truth was that each repetition of this bit of showmanship built on the intolerability of the ones preceding it, making me wonder: “Do these adults really still believe that what they’re doing is in the least bit original, spontaneous, genuine, entertaining or even useful?” 

Judging by the woman’s big smile, vigorous head-nodding and fist pump when the students gave a sufficiently ear-splitting response, I had a sinking feeling that she either really stilled believed it or was still good at pretending that she did.

Lights, Camera, Salivate!

Despite this less-than-auspicious beginning, I tried keeping an open mind to the possibility that these children would end up gaining some value from this “living history” activity and the weeks of effort leading up to it. After all, at the farm, they got a chance to run around a meadow with goats. That was nothing to sneeze at.

Perhaps, this project would have a pay-off too. Perhaps they’d learn something, develop their abilities to think critically and express themselves clearly, use their imaginations.

But it soon became clear that this activity wasn’t likely to provide such results.

I had come expecting to find some kind of “home-made” affair that the children had whipped up with help from teachers and maybe some parent volunteers. I was prepared for the winningly amateurish, the forgivably clumsy. But what I found was a canned, turn-key production by a third party.

This production resembled nothing so much as a reality-tv game show of the “turn up the volume and dumb down the content” variety in which everything is scripted and rehearsed, exaggerated and at the same time superficial.

 True to form, students were divided into color-coded teams. You guessed it: red for the British, white for colonial loyalists and blue for colonial rebels.

The teams competed for a grand prize of a certificate. They earned points depending, in part, on how well members acted out historical scenes (The Battle of Saratoga) or recited brief speeches either in the roles of historic characters (John Paul Jones) or as “experts” in historical fields (the Coercive Acts).

Watching them try to earn extra points by coughing up answers to a quiz and by scrambling to beat the clock while piecing together a jigsaw-puzzle map, I couldn’t help thinking of Pavlov and his dogs. It’s called positive reinforcement.

Are We Having Fun Yet? Don’t Ask.

This game-show vibe came through loud and clear through the activity’s shrill emphasis on positivity. Students were expected to applaud wildly whenever one or more of them acted out a scene or spit out memorized lines.  Of course, just like the audience in a TV game show, parents in the classroom reacted with enthusiasm too, clapping and yelling “woo-hoo” right on cue whenever the students did anything. 

Every time points were given to their teams by the facilitator, students were also expected to stand and make whatever meaningless noise of triumph she’d assigned them. Parents even applauded these acts of self-celebration as if to say, “Good job of applauding your own team, Junior!”

This facilitator had all the spontaneity, sincerity and warmth of a game-show host, calling the students, “my friends.”  Depending on how far one’s willing to stretch the definition of “friends,” I guess she might not have violated the word beyond the point of recovery.

I’ll say this for her. She wasn’t a slacker.  She tried awfully hard to be funny:  admitting that when put on refrigerator doors, the winners’ certificate would be ignored by students’ siblings; calling Thomas Jefferson “T.J.” and speaking in silly English and French accents. Of course, she makes the same jokes at each school where she does this, but somethings just never grow stale, right?

Humor was at such a premium that the audience even laughed when students pretended to be Crispus Attucks being shot to death by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre and Nathan Hale being led away to execution. Understand: These were “heroes” of “our side,” the colonists. Somehow or other, the parents had got it into their heads that these deaths were supposed to be funny. So, determined to be supportive of their children, they dutifully laughed. I hate to think what they would’ve done if they thought they were supposed to be amused by a re-enactment of the bombing of Hiroshima or the interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

But don’t get the wrong idea. This show was not just about fun. Oh, no. It was about respect too. The facilitator insisted upon this. She was an iron fist in a velvet glove.

How does one show respect while reliving the American Revolution? Simple. Through attentiveness and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm meant being loud on demand. Attentiveness, the facilitator informed students, meant that they must be sitting upright at the edge of their seats. Further, they must keep their eyes and ears on her (anatomically challenging, to say the least).

How does one induce students to give respect?  Positive reinforcement, of course. This time, in the form of lollipops, thirteen of them, one for each of England’s North American colonies. When the facilitator singled out individuals to be rewarded for showing respect, she turned on a flashing light. Students had to come up on center stage before the flashing stopped. Then, each removed a lollipop from a stand. Candies with golden sticks earned teams fifty points. When students picked these, they had to say, “Goody!” in a funny voice. When students picked lollipops without golden sticks, they had to say, “Bummer!” in a funny voice. When the children went back to their seats, they were instructed to say, “Nighty-night, Lolly.” Big surprise: They were told to say this in a funny voice too.

Take-Home Messages

The demand for positivity also extended to the content of the performance, to historical lessons students were meant to learn. In particular, the rebels and the country which they created were painted in a glowing light.

Sure, the facilitator took about thirty seconds to admit that Native Americans and African-American slaves didn’t exactly have equal rights under colonial rule. But she did it the way a TV station might run a public service announcement in favor of gun control in the middle of a Dirty Harry marathon.

The take-home messages fell into the predictable good-guy vs. bad-guy category in which “we” (the colonial rebels) were the good guys.

Benedict Arnold was described as “one of the worst traitors in American history” for switching from the rebel side to the British side of the conflict. But George Washington, Paul Revere and John Adams weren’t described as “traitors” for taking up arms against their government in the form of the British king, parliament and army.

According to the facilitator, the rebels “hoped the American Experiment” would bring “freedom to the colonies.” Really? What kind of freedom? For whom: slaves, indentured servants, the working poor, women, Native Americans? Or just rich, white men?

Also, according to the facilitator, the freedom colonists exercised by violently removing themselves from the rule of one government and setting up their own government is directly comparable to the freedom people in the U.S. have exercise today by voting, petitioning and protesting. For a reality check on how free we are to remove ourselves from the rule of our current federal government, consider what happened to southern states that tried to secede from the union.  

Solidarity in the Warehouse

Trying to find comfort as the two-and-one-half-hour presentation wound down, I reminded myself that at least for this activity I hadn’t been required to sign a waiver absolving the sponsors of responsibility if my son was injured through the sponsors’ negligence. To that extent, it was one step above a YMCA camp and an art-instruction group with which Riley’s school does business. It was two steps above a bike-safety training organization that insists on even being absolved from responsibility for student injuries caused by gross negligence.

Also, if nothing else, by being there throughout the performance, I’d been able to express solidarity with my son, not the kind of solidarity that says, “Yeah. Celebrate what a wonderful thing you’re doing,” but the kind that says, “I’m sorry you have to endure this. But at least I can keep you company.” How depressing it was to realize that this was the same kind of solidarity I often end up expressing while visiting people warehoused in other institutions: hospitals, nursing homes and jails.

One Dimension Isn’t Enough

Also depressing was how eagerly other parents in the room lapped up this nonsense. They weren’t just tolerating it. I didn’t see any rolled eyes, hear any sighs. Apparently, it didn’t dawn upon them that these children weren’t learning much beyond a few lines they were forced to memorize and would soon forget. Other than a few kids who enjoyed hamming it up for a little extra attention, most seemed to go through the motions rather sheepishly, as if they felt a bit humiliated by the whole thing.

And why not feel humiliated? They weren’t there to think critically, be spontaneous, feel agentic, express themselves, use their imaginations. They were there to be told how to feel and think and act. They were there to smile and laugh and applaud on demand. They were there to be dressed up and posed like dolls for photo opportunities.

I shuddered as one mother cooed to another in the following vein: “Isn’t this great? I can’t believe that when we were kids, we just had to read books about this stuff.”  Has our need for constant “entertainment” reached the point where the idea of reading a book seems so awful?

After the performance, a number of mothers descended upon the facilitator, assuring her in falsetto voices that she’d done a “wonderful job.”

But, of course, for most of the parents, the success of this project was a foregone conclusion. They simply couldn’t imagine not enjoying it, much less objecting to it. After all, the classroom teacher had sent a message home beforehand describing it as “an exciting and engaging interactive educational presentation of the American Revolution.”

In a follow-up e-mail message, the teacher told parents: “Students were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the experience; I think we can all agree, it’s a great way to learn about history.” There’s all the proof they need that they’d been right to join in the celebration.

Sad to say, I believe these parents, if they thought they were supposed to do so, would cheer their kids for hitting each other with a dead possum. And shout “Encore” when they stopped.

The futility of my years of protesting such occurrences at this school led me to remain mute in the classroom. If I challenged them, these parents, I knew, could easily turn on me like a swarm of angry bees.

Back in the mid-1960s, social critic Herbert Marcuse warned of how in modern society, people are increasingly raised to be one-dimensional, able only to assent to and agree with the life options mass produced by social structures. What would he make of an ordeal such as this put on four decades after his death? And how many people except me are still able to care?

– Kyle Heger