The History Teacher

The poem’s subject, a nondescript history teacher, stands in for those who seek to present a simplified and moralistic history to children. The history lessons that are taught in the poem are symbolic of society’s desire to protect children and sanitize history. The War of Roses becomes a disagreement that “took place in a garden” (Line 11). The dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan becomes the dropping of a singular “tiny atom” (Line 12). The Boer War’s reimagining as “long, rambling stories / designed to make the enemy nod off” (Lines 21-22) obscures colonial violence. By removing violence, particularly Western aggression, Collins argues that the teacher, rather than protecting the students and reducing violence, actually contributes to the problem. The teacher’s purpose to “protect his students’ innocence” (Line 1) reflects the wider cultural push at the time of the poem’s writing to start grounding education in such concepts as morality. Collins shows the ineffectiveness of this ideology in the students’ playground behavior. Collins uses the teacher’s unawareness of the effect of his lessons to criticize the push to soften history.