A Montezuma-Cortez High School student, discussing her fears about school violence, pointed out this week that many of the events we commemorate are not positive ones. She mentioned the anniversary of the Columbine school shooting in Littleton two years ago, Hitler s birthday, the Oklahoma City bombing and Pearl Harbor Day. That s a valid point.
Adults have a different perspective than students, of course.
We understand the distinction between celebrating an event and commemorating it. We memorialize the victims. We do try to remember the good, but there s a subculture that sees, and celebrates, the negative aspects of every evening, pointing out that we are repeating history and we re not really learning very much from it. In some ways that s true. Stories from the past, however powerful they might be, lose their potency through the generations as historical events recede into the increasingly dim past.