My 8th graders’ responses to the threat of nuclear war in the mid-80s
Noah’s story came at the end of our intense study of the nuclear threat during the Cold War with the Soviets. We opened with John Hershey’s Hiroshima, held discussions about large b&w photos of the bombing, viewed films Atomic Café, and ABC television’s The Day After, and did some exercises.
My students and I are sitting in a circle on the floor. A moment of silence. I slowly, very slowly, clank two BBs into a large metal bowl at different intervals: the first to indicate Hiroshima, and after a prescient pause, the other, Nagasaki. I drop ten more, one at a time, to indicate the possible destruction of the world as we knew it. I pour the rest (a thousand total) very slowly to symbolize the world-wide threat of hydrogen bombs. You could have heard a pin drop. My students cringed. So did I.
Near the close of our study, I chose not to give a test, which would only have them guessing what I would ask. I wanted to learn of their understandings of the nuclear threat. I offered them a wide spectrum of activities including poems, propaganda, stories, illustrations, anything that would open a student to himself and his willingness to share it.
Instead, Noah’s piece became one among thoughtful stories, poems, and letters, which his classmates pursued with their minds and hearts in search for their understandings of the nuclear issue.
Years later on Facebook, Kate wrote:
One of the most memorable topics of study in my school days was the unit on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught by Frank Thoms when I was in grade 7 or 8. Part of that unit was some of the most beautiful/brutal photography of the effects of the bombs. Another was my introduction to “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.” Folding small paper cranes when I feel helpless after acts of violence on the world stage has been part of my life ever since. It forces me into my body, into the present, past the panic and fear, back to where I can act from compassion, love, and hope.
Teachers rarely discover the effects of their efforts. It’s been forty years since my students and I investigated the threat of nuclear war. Kate's response tells me my teaching was not in vein.
