There is an article in The Washington Post today about the Peace Studies course that is taught at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (a school just outside of D.C. … and I believe that BMWs are the required mode of transportation for students there). The course is taught by former Post writer Coleman McCarthy.

McCarthy is upfront about his opposition to war, animal testing, the death penalty and other expected points of pacifist adherence. Some students and parents at BCC are upset that the Peace Studies course is being offered with such an unapologetic skewed perspective and a petition has started. The class is called Peace Studies … what do you expect?! The course is an elective, so no student is forced to listen to Mr. McCarthy’s perspective and adhere to his views in order to pass a graduation requirement. I don’t see why there’s a problem.

Mr. McCarthy offered this course through the Honors program at the University of Maryland and I took it during my junior year. The content was certainly unique. We were all required to send letters to death row inmates asking about their lives and getting to know the senstive men behing the murdering and raping. We were introduced to a live turkey before Thanksgiving break and then challenged still to eat turkey over the holidays. We read essays by Ghandi, King, Joan Baez and the instructor himself. We learned that inner-city minorities were not responsible for their crimes. We learned that all men were potential rapists. We watched videos taken at a slaughterhouse, a bull fight and a hunting excursion (Dick Cheney had an award-worthy cameo). We listened to a lot of music from the 1960s and were asked to write reflection pieces on it. At the end of the semester, we were asked to meditate and determine the grade that we felt we deserved. I gave myself a 93% … I wanted the “A” but I didn’t want to get greedy.

I believe it would be interesting to go back and take that class again ten years later with the different perspective that I now have on many issues. It still would be better than the Honors course called “Examining and Understanding Male Sexuality” that we had as an option. Lots of guys signed up for the course thinking they would get to talk about sex every week. Much to their dismay, the first assignment of the class was to find a photograph of male genitals, bring the picture in to share with fellow students and then write an essay about how looking at the genitals made them feel. Ah, higher education.