Moments after the second-period bell rings, Pam Richer’s sophomores are wrestling with the issue of when, if ever, it’s appropriate to send U.S. troops into battle.
The 14 students are studying the Spanish-American War of 1898. The discussion that follows the 10-minute mulling of U.S. foreign policy, Richer explains, will help the students analyze the motivations behind this country’s support of Cuban rebels against Spanish rule in the late 1890s.
That’s one part of the day’s “Learning Outcome.” Every class at Manual trumpets the day’s “L.O.” It tells students what they will learn. Below the L.O. is the “P.O.P.” — or Proof of Purchase — which tells students what they will need to turn in as proof of their grasp of the day’s assignment. The other part of the day’s L.O. is to understand the reasons the U.S. fought with Spain in 1898.
Reading aloud from their textbooks, the students learn about the sensationalized newspaper reports that helped push the U.S. into war. Richer plays a song, “The Editor Is to Blame,” that blasts newspaper titans for boosting circulation with exaggerated yarns of poor, “bleeding Cuba” and “brutal Spain.”
The students study illustrations from newspapers and magazines in the late 1890s. There’s a grisly depiction of the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine. There’s a cartoon of a swollen-bellied Uncle Sam, a tailor letting out his clothes to accommodate expansion. Pictures of battles, with Cuban slaves rebelling against colonial Spanish oppressors.
Richer asks students to pen a letter to the editor — part of the day’s P.O.P. — expressing their thoughts about newspaper coverage of the 1898 events in Cuba. She gives them 12 minutes.
Some students go to work. A few chatter. Richer urges everyone to focus. The classroom’s clock is engulfed in a banner reading “Time To Focus.”
While some students doodle or scribble nearly incoherent sentences, several write well-crafted letters. One criticizes the editor’s lack of accuracy, writing, “You don’t need to exaggerate.” One blasts the editor for supporting Cuba’s rebelling slaves while ignoring slavery in America. Another tells the editor, “If you don’t tell the truth, then who is?” Jason Blevins, The Denver Post
