Was Fidel Castro Nixon's Secretary of Defense?

No... but thank you for asking!

Yesterday I subbed a class on short notice and I really don’t know what the subject was. But I happened to meet a kid who was a history buff!

He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Napoleon’s era. Knew tons of things I didn’t know. Deep thoughts on military history.

This sweet young man had never been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where their collection of arms and armor impressed my then partner MR, who after all was a boy and likes that sort of thing. I wanted to bring this young man to the museum. He was fascinated by the idea that they have real suits of armor and swords, not replicas. He could barely imagine such a thing.

I want to get these kids out. It’s a drive that I imagine is not that far off from the drive to see your own children succeed. I want to see these kids go out into the world and explore their passions, live their dreams. If I had the power to… but all I have is the power of words. Discipline. Kindness. Stickers.

The kids like to ask how old I am. I make them work for the information by telling them that I came home from the hospital when Nixon was leaving the White House… so look it up. Yes, I was born in 1974.

This is how I happened to find out that this kid wondered, “Was Fidel Castro his Secretary of Defense?”

And history is rewritten, in a Philly minute.

The kids know almost nothing of American history. They are taught “African American History” and to be fair, I am not too familiar with the curriculum. Part 1619 Project I think but I’m not sure. I know my kids were shocked that Africans sold other Africans as slaves before any white people got the notion. I hope they didn’t get beaten by later teachers if they said that out loud. Heaven forbid we bring actual facts into discourse of the history of race relations.

I gave a quiz once, no grades just a diagnostic, on American history. Here were some of the questions and the respondents were eighth graders:

— Which came first, the Civil War or the American Revolution?

— Who gave the Gettysburg Address and where was it given?

— What is Richard Nixon famous for?

— What was the Cold War (I learned it is a video game.)

There were ten questions. The only kids who got more than three right were my Vietnamese kids. 2022, right off of Kensington Avenue, in public schools.

This is what we are teaching, or not teaching our children.

There is so much hope… in every child who tries to read or write at all. In the delightful seventh grade girls who spent the afternoon making sentences with vocabulary words for stickers. The smartest ones got their faces covered in smiley face and holographic stars. Those little girls are the future.

Words are power, I tell my children. I teach them to codeswitch, to change their accent, to speak English properly. Call me racist and I ask you how else you gonna get my babies a job?

And such I became a conservative. I want these kids to make a living and support their families. I don’t want them to ever worry that their EBT will be delayed because I don’t want them to be on it. I want them to run for mayor.

One of the smart, sassy, bigger than life personality girls in my favorite eighth grade was saying something about how she’d be mad if they didn’t let her use her phone… so I told her she’d better run for public office. We got most of the class to agree to vote for her.

Black urban poverty is not an abstraction to me. It isn’t beautiful and it isn’t just the downstream effects of whatever the professors say it is. It’s the accumulation of choices. Now these children who are coming of age have choices.

May they choose to use words wisely, learn behaviors that will serve them well. I pray that they will become successful workers, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, my fellow citizens.

Nothing could make me happier, nothing on earth, than seeing that amazing eighth grade girl with a personality that could fill city blocks, be mayor of this city.

Daenyu.