As a child growing up in the late fifties and early sixties I lived on Mac Dill Air Force Base in Tampa. I also went to a school on the base for kindergarten and first grade. I remember walking to Tinker Elementary school and there was a trench or ditch dug along side of the road going to school.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had not yet happened, but I knew that there was definitely something bad going on but nobody would tell me.
My mother had to get "Black-out" curtains for all the windows and at night they had to be pulled. She also kept a trunk of food and several containers of water in our hallway. She also had several blankets and pillows stacked on top of the trunk, and there was a closet that she kept empty except for more blanket and pillows being piled inside.
The base would sound the "alarm" twice every day. Once at 1:00 pm and the other anytime.
If we were on our way to school we had to jump down into the ditch and cover our heads until the alarm was over.
If I was at school, our desks were like giant wooden boxes with one side that pulled out and had a seat that would fold up. When the alarmed sounded, we would scramble out of our seats, pull the side out, fold up the seat, crawl into the box and pull the side with the seat back in so that we were completely inside the box. I remember it being dark and hot (no air conditioning in the schools back then). Once the alarm stopped we waited until our teacher told us to get out.
If I was home, my mother would tell me to go into the closet and she would cover me with blankets. She would step inside and close the door. I always wondered why she didn't cover herself with blankets.
But the one memory that is the clearest and most vivid were the "Duck and Cover" commercials that ran on the T.V., These commercials had this catch phase - "Duck and Cover... Duck and Cover... Boys and girls - if you see the flash - DUCK and COVER". There was this turtle Bert who would DUCK and COVER. The thing that bothers me today is that the government actually felt they had to teach us to "Duck and Cover" when we saw the flash of a nuclear bomb. Like we could see after seeing the flash of a nuclear bomb.
When I first started teaching in the late eighties, we still had the Doom-Days Clock a few minutes before twelve, and inevitable a student would ask questions about nuclear bombs or atomic bombs. By the late nineties and into this century I never had students ask me about it that is until last year. This saddened me as I realized that we have a nuclear threat unlike when I was a child - A threat that came from a government. Instead these students have terrorist groups and organizations that Hate with a hate that frightens most of us.
Today's students did not grow up discussing nuclear bombs or world wide destruction or the Doomsdays Clock. They have frame of reference to place or base their "atomic" fears, this is one reason that when I discuss alternative fuel sources (nuclear power) I also bring in nuclear weapons - which is where our current nuclear energy came from.
One of the most disturbing films I saw a teen was the "Day After" - a film about what would happen if we went to war with at the time the USSR. It centers around the people in a town just outside of Kansas City. It is very realistic and terrifying.
I wonder about the kind of world we are leaving for our children. How can we be peaceful with such Hate? Are there answers for this problem?
There is another film that came out about a boy who quits playing baseball, which he loved so much. It was his way of saying enough is enough. He then quits talking, and soon all the children in the whole world quit talking. Eventually Russia and the US agree to disarm ALL their nuclear weapons. (There is a side story about a pro-basketball player who quits playing as a show of support). I ask can one person make a difference? Are we capable of changing the world? If so how can we help children understand the need for peace, the need for understanding the complexities of the world around them.
My students of today will have to face global problems like the total depletion of the fossil fuels, global warming, bio-terrorist attacks and global epidemics. Again I ask, can one person make a difference? Are we capable of changing the world?
I believe we can - at least if each of us took one little part of the Earth and claim it as our responsibility we could save the Earth - one little piece at a time. That is one reason why I stress community service in my class room. We can make a better place by teaching our children to care about the world and all of its inhabitants.
