Time Warp

For check-in yesterday, I asked my Drama 1 students to tell me

"If you found/invented a time machine, which historical event would you choose to see first?"

Of my 41 students, about 95% of them named something from their own lives. As in, "Last summer, when I went to California," or "When I was ten and I fell off my dirt bike," or even "Yesterday, so I can go to sleep again." (I have to say, though, that given my body's total refusal to adjust back to a school sleeping schedule and my subsequent all-day headache today, I was totally in agreement with that last one.)

The only "historical events" named were "I'd see Martin Luther King speak," "The original cast of Wicked," "The dinosaurs!" and "World War II."

It seems to me that this was another defining middle-school moment. I tried to figure out the reasons for their apparent narcissism. Either
1) They don't care much about historical events.
2) They don't know much about historical events.
or 3) They just can't think about anything outside of their literal experience.

Whatever the reason, it was an interesting moment to me.