The History Teacher

"The History Teacher" by Billy Collins is a satirical poem making fun of  teachers diluting the material taught to students t make it seem less violent or more "politically correct". Examples such as: "The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as,'How Far is it from here to Madrid?'...", show that the teacher was purposefully trying to hide the truth from the students. Billy Collins' purpose in writing this was to show the blatant "ignorance" that some teachers show when they teach material this way.