Pam Taylor: Suggested viewing beyond typical curriculum

Springtime! Opening day. My pregame ritual includes listening to “Centerfield” and “Glory Days,” watching “Field of Dreams” (noting again the book-banning and “Is this Heaven?” scenes) and hoping that this is The Year for the Detroit Tigers.

Meanwhile, the Great Re-Awakenin’ Travelin’ Salvation Show keeps chugging along, selling sedition, merch, quackery, paranoia and prayers through a few keyboard clicks. Well-organized and funded Stand-Up-Stand-By and Moms-that-often-aren’t-Moms groups are dive-bombing school boards and local libraries and governments with selected outrages, glorifying assault weapons, trying to force their sect’s dogma onto others while ignoring the fact that little gun-massacred victims can’t read books.

A Florida charter school affiliated with Hillsdale College just dumped its principal for allowing a photo of Michelangelo’s David, one of the world’s most famous sculptures, to be shown to sixth graders as part of its classical curriculum because parents thought it was pornographic. I have no idea what they think of the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Adam, or the Madonna of Bruges. I imagine The Last Judgment, if one looks closely enough, is completely off-limits.

So here are my helpful suggestions for a few basics that might not be included in typical school curricula.

Topping the list (above “Field of Dreams,” even) is Laura Haviland’s “A Woman’s Life-Work – Labors and Experiences.” This autobiography’s a must-read for every local school student, every Lenawee County resident. The abolitionist and suffragette, here at the beginning of Michigan’s abolitionist movement, tells her story in her own words. You’ll read about obstacles overcome, her journeys as part of the Underground Railroad, how this community protected her from slave-catchers, and how she opened Michigan’s first racially integrated school here. You’ll learn about her efforts to help those displaced by the Ku Klux Klan. This is Lenawee’s beating heart, something that should never be disgraced by the Confederate flag.

Next is the movie, “Hidden Figures,” about three women who worked for NASA during the Space Race and in whom John Glenn placed his trust. If you love math and science and space and seeing what it means when girls and women strive to be their best, you’ll love this. There’s a whole lot more to this story than algebra.

Now that we’ve covered successful women in nontraditional roles, race, and woke, let’s move on.

Get John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” either the book or the movie (but I like the movie better). It’s about a man-made environmental disaster, the near-collapse of our nation, and the Midwestern farmers who lost everything and headed west to work as migrants in the fields of California. Great scenes in the movie version; Henry Fonda delivers one of the best movie speeches ever. This could happen again, folks.

Watch “Bound for Glory,” loosely based on the life of Woody Guthrie and his stories of Depression-era America and the Okies (pejorative for those Dust Bowl migrants from Oklahoma), told through song. Learn why he wrote “This Land is Your Land” and be sure to look up the three verses you probably didn’t sing at school or choral performances. This era gave us the New Deal and more specifically related to this film, the Farm Bill and the Rural Electrification Act with its tax-subsidized co-operatives that still bring electricity to Lenawee County and other places.

Listen to Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” then read about his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives, and about Will Geer (Grandpa Walton), during the 1950s Red Scare. This could happen again, folks.

That covers socialism, social justice, environmentalism, antifascism and more woke.

Let’s end this list with the movie classic “Casablanca.” What could be better than spending a couple of hours with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart and this World War II thriller about The Greatest Generation, when the Allies saved the world’s democracies? We must always remember this, as time goes by.

Here’s looking at you, kids. The future’s yours. Make it a good one.

Pam Taylor is a retired Lenawee County teacher and an environmental activist. She can be reached at ptaylor001@msn.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Pam Taylor: Suggested viewing beyond typical curriculum