'The History Teacher' - Billy Collins

Thesis: In the poem 'The History Teacher', Billy Collins utilizes a specialized from of understatement, euphemism  in order to reveal the irony of the teachers actions.

Paragraph 1: The teacher uses euphemisms on multiple occasions in order to protect and shelter his children from the evils of the world.

"Trying to protect his students' innocence/ he told them the Ice Age was really just/ the Chilly Age, a period of a million years/ when everyone had to wear sweaters" (1-4)

-The teacher downplays the effects of the ice age and vastly understates the true importance that it had on    the world.
-The teacher, in an attempt to understate the importance of the ice age, uses humor saying: "when everyone had to wear sweaters" (4). With the humor he creates through obvious fallacy, that humans did not have sweaters in the ice age, the teacher shelters his kids from the true importance of very eventful eras.

"And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,/ named after the long driveways of the time" (5-6)

-Again the teacher uses a euphemism to understate the importance of an important era in history. His avoidance of the truth is to protect the innocence of the children and to shelter them.

Paragraph 2: The teacher's understatements are ironic because of the fact that the kids are just evil and cruel despite the teacher's attempts at sheltering them.

"The children would leave his classroom/ for the playground to torment the weak/ and the smart,/ mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses" (14-17)

-Despite the teacher's attempts at downplaying important eras and violent excursions, such as the use of the atom bomb and how the Boers fight, the students ironically are violent. The euphemisms shelter the children, but the teacher's goal of protecting them fails when the children are let out on their own.