Ok, I’ll be honest with everyone: I forgot everything I learned about Apollo 11. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not even sure if I was taught about the first lunar landing. When I read NASA’s and the BBC’s account of the first moonwalk, I realized how little I knew, and how I never considered that event relevant to my life. I’m still not sure I’ve ever been in a class that discussed “recent” U.S. history, but I’m sure that if we went over this event, we probably did not go into much depth. I don’t know how it is with schools that other people have gone to, but I feel like my school did not put as much emphasis on “current events”—events that occurred in the past fifty years—as it did on the founding of our nation, up to the turn of the 20th century. As a result, I realized how unfamiliar I am with my parents’ era and the time leading up to now. I think it is wrong for teachers to center their curriculum solely on events that occurred two hundred years ago. Events that happened that long ago are hard to imagine. Every time someone talks about how colonial life was, I wonder how they got so many details out of a couple of arrowheads. As a student, learning about our nation’s history would be easier if we got to learn about events we could actually imagine happening.
Because the school I went to did not spend as much time talking about the 20th century, I have trouble making connections with my parents, who were my age in the 60’s and 70’s. The intergenerational gap that opens between teens and their parents results partly from the lack of knowledge and understanding of each others eras. The Apollo 11 mission is a good example of this. My parents have their memories and significant events and I have mine, but our relationship would have been much better if I was more aware of the “cool” things that happened while they were young. It must have been so eye-popping, jaw-dropping to see the launch on television, no matter what color it was in. To see something that was once a fantasy come to fruition must be the best feeling in the world. There are very few events in history where you sit back in your chair and just stare—stare and cry because what you see or hear is so amazing. Of course I wasn’t alive when the moonwalk happened, but I'm sure the footage is just as emotional, no matter how many times you see it. Realizing that people worked, bled, died for this singular event to happen, and that this event represents generations of exploration and discoveries and defeating the odds—it wipes you off your feet and empties your mind. How many times in your life have you stopped and felt like what you are witnessing is bigger than the screen, bigger than a place, a work of a higher power?
It is difficult for me to say how this event impacted life today because I don't know enough about the historical context, or about where we are in terms of space exploration. Outer space is so cool! Little kids dream about worlds with no gravity and rocket ships and aliens. I think we will always be a species that looks up at the stars and wonders, “What’s out there?” I think that feeling of wonderment will drive us to discover more and strive to understand. Certainly, this event reminds us all that nothing is impossible, no matter how absurd it seems now.
Outer space is just as difficult an idea for me to grasp, as is the idea of microorganisms. I am convinced that both exist and they are intricate, fascinating and mind-blowing, but to me they’re just concepts. Perhaps this tells you what kind of learner/person I am. Illustrations in textbooks are easy to memorize and they’re fun to look at, but real images of outer space (and microorganisms) appear so different to me. I’ve always wanted to know how scientists could look at a blurry, black-and-white photo of a blob and write papers analyzing its makeup and function. I’m not easily convinced that all of the information we have is based on bad photographs and hypotheses. Understanding the way I think, I can totally see how skeptics could question the images they saw and the information they were fed. To be fair, the world needs people who question “the way things are,” because those are the people who push us to be more critical of the work we do and conclusions we draw. Being able to defend information with better facts and discoveries only makes us stronger. I'm sure we have tons of evidence to support the moonwalk, and very few people are crazy enough to try and bring down one of our nation's most cherished moments.
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