A History Teacher Writes About Salinger And Zinn; Your Tributes

January 29th, 2010 - by: danny

DemocracyNow.org — Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove [link includes transcript]

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When Historian Howard Zinn died on Wednesday, and then Catcher In The Rye author, JD Salinger, yesterday, I reached out for a special perspective, for the insights of a Massachusetts high school teacher who spent a career teaching in the spirit of Howard Zinn’s “Peoples History” and who also connected his teenage students to the work of the author of the classic, “Catcher in The Rye.”

That teacher, my “expert” witness today, is my brother, Bill Schechter, for whom both of these great writers were not abstractions but inspirations in an ongoing discourse shared with generations of kids, many initially very apolitical. He asked them to engage personally and critically with their ideas and did so in a very creative and interactive way. I asked him to share his innovative approach with us as an era seems to be passing on.

Bill writes:

“The deaths of Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger removed from the planet two men—and two minds—that I relied on during my 35-year career as a high school history teacher.

Passages and quotations from Zinn’s People’s History were sprinkled throughout my 20th Century course. Meanwhile, in my Postwar America class, I would assign Catcher in the Rye as part of a discussion about the immediate post-WWll years. We would have wonderful arguments about whether the book was intended as an evocation of a typical “lost’ adolescent or as a critique of postwar American culture.

One year, I decided we had to step out of the book and onto the streets that Holden had walked during his runaway days in New York. And so began the tradition of “The New York Trip in Search of Kerouac & Caulfield.” After a few Kerouac stops, we’d catch up with Holden at the Museum of National History, by that giant war canoe and later by the display case with the Native American woman of naked breast fame. We’d stop, pull out the book, and read the pertinent passages, all the while watching those New York school kids on their field trips, holding hands. and looking just as if they had fallen out of one of the pages. Then it was down to the Duck Pond in Central Park, and, as we left the city that night, we’d stop at Grand Central where Holden had come into the city from Pencey Prep. Into the rush hour madness we ran for a group picture at that iconic gold clock-topped information kiosk.

Oh, I almost forgot. We also paid a visit to the Central Park carousel with its “nutty music.” We’d stand outside and read aloud from that touching scene where Holden waits for his sister, “Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield,” to complete her ride on the carousel and have her chance to grab the gold ring. When we closed the book, fifty stressed-out Lincoln-Sudbury students would run to get a place on the wooden horses, so that they too could have a ride and rediscover the days of innocent and carefree youth.

I’m so sorry President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. There was no standardized testing on this day. No “assessments.” No “accountability.” No way to tell what or how much they learned. No, there was only the sublime.

Anyway, so where do the duck go?”

Here’s an image of a mural they created at the Lincoln Sudbury High School. From what I observed, the students who went on those “field” trips were deeply moved and inspired even as they drove down from Boston at 5 in the morning for a day in the big city.

Reader Comments on Howard Zinn:

Ken Roseman:

“We have lost so many recently: Howard Zinn, Walter Cronkite, Tim Hart (of Steeleye Span), Kate McGarrigle… I watched most of President Obama’s speech, and was disappointed to hear that he seems to favor off shore oil drilling and the expansion of nuclear power. I am also tired of hearing about “bipartisanship”– the Repubs will not give an inch on anything. I would prefer that Obama stop listening to the Repubs and conservative Dems and agressively push for a progressive program: “Green” jobs, single payer health care, repeal the “Patriot Act,” cancel NAFTA and CAFTA, preserve “open space,” etc etc…

Barbara BF writes from Minneapolis:

Sent a copy of your article about the death of Howard Zinn to my friend and former neighbor who attended Spellman College, and was taught by Howard Zinn. My friend Edith was one of those who decided to march in support of MLK after being inspired in the classroom by Howard Zinn. She said the students were quickly arrested and packed into cells so small, with so many students, that they had to take turns leaning against the walls, as their was no room for sitting. She said they were in jail for nearly a day, when the head of Spellman College, at the insistence of the parents of the students..put up bonds for the girls and had them released. She said that the reason Howard Zinn was fired by Spellman, was because he had influenced the girls (who I think, like Edith, were from Middle-class Black families) to join in the MLK protests…instead of being “good little girls” and concentrating on finding good marriage prospects. I asked Edith several times to write down her memories of her days at Spellman, and Howard Zinn and the protests march. She said she would, but has never gotten around to it.

Dan Beach:

“Howard Zinn was such a hero during an amazingly heady time. Would there were more like him.”

Barbara Goetz:

I share your loss with Howard Zinn, both he and Noam Chomsky have given us tools to think and make change.

Betsy Romero:

“Howard Zinn was a hero of mine; he made history come alive. He was never strident or indignant but always used a conversational, matter-of-fact tone that was infinitely effective.”

Heidi J. Vierthaler

“My heart goes out to you and yours with the deepest of condolences for the passing of the legendary historian Zinn. I wish I could have met him, so I can only imagine the grief you must feel. I am so mourning his loss, too.”

Hartley Pleshaw: writes:

I have one more personal reminiscence of Prof. Zinn. About ten years ago, I produced and hosted TV coverage of Boston’s annual theater awards event, The Elliot Norton Awards. That year, Howard’s son Jeff won (as he so often does) for a production from his theater in Wellfleet on the Cape. Thinking that Jeff was a relative of some sort, I took it upon myself to call Howard, so I could send him a tape of the program. I also told Howard that I had recently lectured a group of people at the Lowell Historical Park about one of my favorite subjects, the great 1912 “Bread & Roses” textile workers strike (in my hometown of Lawrence, MA), and that I had a tape of the lecture. I asked Howard if he’d be interested in seeing it, and to give me his opinion about its accuracy. A few weeks later, I called him back, and he told me that I got it right.

It wasn’t for any academic credit, but when one of the greatest historians who ever lived told me that “I got it right,” it meant more to me than any grade I ever got in school.”

Ray Yerkes writes from Newburyport, MA:

Your memorial to Howard Zinn was sensitive, loving and placed him in the position of legitimate esteem that he deserves. We don’t have many like him any more, so you have to carry on the “truth” tradition which he has so inspired. So many times you could have “sold out” for greater personal security or prominence and you have not. I was working as a child psychiatrist (white) in Roxbury at the time this was going on. There I developed an “identity as a white person” (as contrasted to “isn’t everybody.”) I learned to look at the world through the eyes of “other people” who saw another reality in America. I had no compass until I discovered Howard Zinn who looked at the world through another set of eyes. I have not been the same since. Thank you for remembering Prof Zinn.”

HOWARD’S LAST WORDS

A few days before he died, he responded to a question from Rabbi Arthur Waskow who suggested to him that a mass movement was needed to challenge the Obama Administration. He responded:

“Arthur, you are absolutely right, this is the time for the resurgence of a national movement that begins with a co-ordinated country-wide action.

The theme you describe, “independence from the military-corporation” is one that all sorts of people and groups can unite around. I believe millions, probably tens of millions of people are ready for this because there is little left of the early euphoria that greeted Obama’s election.

A huge job to organize it, but it was done for Mobilization Day Oct.15,1969, and without the advantage of the Internet.

Someone or some group that is respected throughout the progressive movement would need to take the initiative and summon supporters. With blacks, Latinos, women prominent, and not disdaining celebrities. I think of Julian Bond, Danny Glover, Rosie Perez, Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Matt Damon, Oprah, Alice Walker, Marian Wright Edelman — some well-known clergy, you and others, some labor leaders. Maybe not that exact group, but just to suggest a direction. And a few super-organizers.

I’m not up for organizing these days, maybe for consultation, and whatever help I can give.”

Rory O’Connor writes on Mediachannel about our own relationship with Howard:

My partner and our company tried to work on turning the People’s History into a TV series. Rory O’Connor, who headed the project, worked with Howard and writes about the experience in his blog on Mediachannel.

A taste:

“Later I had the honor of taking over for Zinn (who had succeeded News Dissector Danny Schechter) as a political commentator on WBCN-FM. ‘BCN’ was then the most popular radio station in New England and a center of the “counterculture” that had sprouted most vigorously in Boston, fueled by alternative media that included the Boston Phoenix and the late Real Paper of Cambridge and nourished by the many colleges and universities there, the students who poured in from all over the country – and radical academics like Howard Zinn.

Somewhere along the way, Howard and I became friends. He wasn’t a difficult person to befriend — ever mellow, unassuming and open, his graceful manner and easy acceptance helped me put aside my awe and hero worship to view him as a real personÃ¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦

Read the rest!!

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