Because I wanted my students to be everything they desired, including what they had yet to fathom for their lives, I remained steadfast. If I were to teach them the classics, I realized that I would have to be more strategic. To illustrate, consider how I began teaching one such work of literature. At the onset of the lesson, I asked my class a simple question: Who was responsible for the downfall of man? They, as you can imagine, looked at me with blank stares. Eventually, someone said "the cops," after which someone else said "the government"; then one of the boys said "women" with a laugh, and I had the answer I was seeking. "How so?" I probed. What had women done to us? "Eve ate the apple, didn’t she?" someone else offered. And thus began my instruction of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

We first read verses from the "Book of Genesis" where Eve ate the forbidden fruit and gave it to Adam. Then I asked about the notion of an apple. Nowhere in the Bible, I explained, was there mention of an apple, so where did it come from? John Milton was the answer. I went on to discuss his impact on the world during his time and beyond, his stated goal of explaining the ways of God to man, and his passion for completing the text even as he lost his sight late in life. Then I showed them scenes from The Devil’s Advocate, the film starring Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. Some had seen it, but most hadn’t, and all were shocked to learn that Pacino’s character, the devil incarnate, was named John Milton. I had them then.

Because of the text’s complexity, I read most of it aloud as they followed along, stopping during important scenes to ensure comprehension and analyze the arguments offered by the principal characters. Milton, I explained, gave Adam, Eve, Satan, and God personalities that aren’t present in the Bible. By giving them voices, he depicted the events in the Garden of Eden in ways no other author had done before—so much so that people began reading the text as truth and not a product of Milton’s imagination. This explains why, even today, centuries after it was written, many believe that the forbidden fruit was an apple: "Him by fraud I have seduc’d/From his Creator, and the more to increase/Your wonder, with an Apple …" offers a triumphant Satan.

To assess my students’ understanding, I challenged them to debate which character was really responsible for the fall of man and then write an essay answering this question. Because I was the school’s debate coach as well, I taught them how to compose, analyze, defend, and deconstruct arguments in the technical style of a policy debate. Then I separated them into teams and facilitated what would become an incredible display of competition and scholarship. They had read the work of a dead white man and enjoyed it.

I went on to teach Shakespeare’s Othello, Emerson’s Self-Reliance, and other classics with the same fervor. Although James didn’t always seem engaged, many of my students were. So when you are determining what to teach this Black History Month, by all means, teach Baldwin and Wright and Ellison and Hurston and Walker and Hughes and Morrison and Brooks and Angelou—but don’t do so in isolation. Teach Lincoln on his birthday this February, and read from Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama this President’s Day. Black history, after all, is American and world history. Teach it in the context of the human condition all year round.

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