48 Children. 1 Classroom. 1 Teacher. The Lesson.

The history that won’t go away

My teacher, a decade or so before he taught me

There were twenty-four desks in my classroom when I was eleven, forty eight of us crowding them, two per desk.

For five days a week, barring holidays, our teacher would walk stern-faced between the four rows, eight desks in each, cane in one hand, lightly but decisively tapping its swish on the palm of his ot…