March 5, 2009
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History Fair
My best friend is the social studies consultant for the local school district, and every year he’s in charge of the history fair. That event was today, and I was a judge. My category this year was Junior and Senior Websites, and I had to go to the fair to interview the kids who had entered my category. It was only about fifteen websites, and they ranged from some slave rebellion leader (Joseph Cinque) that I had never heard of to Confusius to Joseph Stalin. We asked the kids why they chose the topic they had. The two kids who had done their website on Stalin amused me the most.
“We were interested in World War II, and our first thought was to do something about Adolf Hitler. Then we decided everybody knows who he is. We found out that Joseph Stalin was a kind of big guy in that, and we decided to research Stalin because nobody knows who he is.”
Oh! My! God! Nobody knows who Joseph Stalin is?! I didn’t laugh at those cute, sweet girls, but it was all I could do to surpress laughter when they said that. Then I remembered that adolescents think the universe revolves around them and that time only began when they figured out how to use the
TV remote to get MTV. Ironically, these girls were in the senior division (high school), and history fair participants are typically the better students in the school. Oh my.ED
