Rocks that Move

I have two more amusing things regarding teaching.

First, last week I was teaching my students about Imperialism during the latter half of the nineteenth century up until 1914, and one of the things we discussed as a causal factor in the acceleration of Imperial actions in Asia was organized religion. Wanting to spread their faith, Christian missionaries began to pour into the East, some of them with good intentions, and others not so much. The result was two-fold. First, it increased Western military activities in the East as Imperial powers were urged to protect these missionaries, as well as the huge influx of scientists, biologists, anthropologists, botanists, journalists, and writers that also went East to make a name for themselves. Second, the arrival of missionaries resulted in cultural changes that fueled Eastern fears of the West, as many felt that their culture was endangered. Early in the discussion I had put up on the board a photograph of a Baptist family from America that was dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, and I brought that image up again when I discussed one of the results of Imperialism in China, the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers targeted Christian missionaries for spreading foreign ideas and culture, and the family I showed had actually been killed in the rebellion.

Today something interesting happened. I live in the South, at the foot of the Bible belt. As I was walking to class today, I was approached by a Chinese man with a clipboard and a book. The book was a study Bible, which he was giving away if I was willing to fill in an information sheet for his church. Over one hundred years ago missionaries from America and other Western nations began spreading the Christian faith in China, and today a Chinese missionary was in America in the south trying to spread Christianity to us. I don't know if this is a Hoyle-book definition of irony or not, but I definitely found it an interesting coincidence! Of course he was likely working for a local church, but the irony still was there.

The other thing I ran into today are History Channel students. Today we began discussing World War I, and I got a taste of what I have to look forward to in the next few weeks. I had a World War I buff in my class who kept raising his hand and asking really specific, technical questions about World War I, and it quickly became evident that he already knew the answers to the questions. He wanted to test my knowledge and show everyone how smart he is. I successfully answered some of his questions, but he got me on two. I did not know the name of the telegram that was sent to Mexico by Germany trying to convince them to join the war against America, and I was not certain why Russia was allied with Serbia, though I was not surprised to find out it was an ethnic relationship. I appreciated the information, frankly, but at the same time I was up there trying to explain a very large and complex topic to a beginner crowd in one day. His questions did not help. I may as well get used to it. It will get even worse next week when I discuss the Russian Revolution and especially the week after when I discuss World War II. I am doing World War II in a week- one day to discuss Hitler and Germany, one day for the war itself, and a day for the Holocaust. I just don't have time to go into more depth than that, but the end result is going to be a lot of unhappy World War II buffs who will want to tell me about the documentary they saw about how Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor or how Hitler was a big fan of Charlie Chaplin. God forbid I get anyone who wants to publicly deny the Holocaust! That is the one thing that might provoke me to acts of violence. Hopefully I will get around that. It is the only day all semester that I am showing a movie. I have a little documentary from the Schindler's List dvd with actual interviews with Holocaust survivors. I figured they could tell their story better than I can, and it eliminates me having to answer questions all lecture.

In any case, from here on out I think the History Channel is going to be the bane of my existence.