Before I start this post, I should preface with the fact that my history teacher, "Dr. Clark" is arguably the most awesome teacher I have had yet and I'm
not whining.
Now. Last week I got into my very first argument with a teacher! Yes, I know it's hard to believe I held out that long, but like I said, Dr. Clark is cool, and seems to
want us to do well in his class, and he helps us with anything we ask for, and he's very approachable, and seems to be impressed that I'm homeschoooled, so I could ignore daily liberal lectures, right?
Yes.
I could.
Until he started talking about Karl Marx.
Now, it could be argued that my strong feelings about Communism come from the fact that my boyfriend is Cuban
but! Mary Ann, that is not true. =) I have always gotten more fired up about THAT single issue than any other.
So anyway, we were doing vocabulary for the test early - checking to see if our answers were right so we could score well on the test- like I said, he's awesome.
We were divided up into groups, and one group read their definition of Karl Marx.
"Social activist and father of Communism, he helped imlement social changes that brought justice to workers."
Next was our groups' turn. Before reading my definition for, I think, the Interstate Commerce Act or something, I coughed rather loudly and said "Well, my definition of Marxism was quite different."
Dr. Clark asked, Well, what was yours?
I read "Hard to measure the impact of one whose ideas carried-out were responsible for the death of hundreds of millions, and drove scores of nations into economic ruin."
After snickering and assuring me "It wasn't all Karl, it was corruption of Soviet Russia-"
"-and Cuba" I added helpfully, he said to write it again, focusing more on the idea and the positive changes in the US, than what I had.
I scribbled that Marxism was,
"A simplistic view of a utopian workers' paradise. Although some positive ideas were implemented in the US, reality proved it to be an inherantly flawed and violent system."
Yes. I did raise my hand and ask if he wanted to hear my new definition. Yes. I did read that to the class. It was rather fun, in a scary sort of way.
OK OK. I did end up mentioning Cuba. I couldn't help it. I mean come on...
