The lessons presented by the teacher as metaphors were a showcase of irony and sarcasm because the actual events were nothing compared to his stories. “The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart” displays the irony of how the students are becoming destined to repeat the history their teacher so wanted them to avoid. The “weak and the smart” are being bullied by students who have been shielded from the pain of the past. Furthering his agenda of irony, the poet writes of the teachers walking home among the “flowerbeds and white picket fences” clueless to the destruction he is creating. The white picket fences symbolize the ideal life, one that the history teacher is desperately trying to
The lessons presented by the teacher as metaphors were a showcase of irony and sarcasm because the actual events were nothing compared to his stories. “The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart” displays the irony of how the students are becoming destined to repeat the history their teacher so wanted them to avoid. The “weak and the smart” are being bullied by students who have been shielded from the pain of the past. Furthering his agenda of irony, the poet writes of the teachers walking home among the “flowerbeds and white picket fences” clueless to the destruction he is creating. The white picket fences symbolize the ideal life, one that the history teacher is desperately trying to