[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic American stories of the last half-century. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and a handful of contexts.]
On more overt and more subtle reasons why the teacher-turned-astronaut
was a perfect choice for the Teacher
in Space Project (and an especially tragic loss).
At least according to her mother Grace George Corrigan’s Foreword
to Colin Burgess’s cultural biography Teacher
in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger
Legacy (2000), the day after John Glenn’s historic September
1962 space flight a 13-year-old Christa McAuliffe told a high school friend,
“Do you realize that someday people will be going to the moon? Maybe even taking
a bus, and I want to do that!” Nearly a quarter-century later, when she was
applying for President Ronald Reagan’s Teacher in Space Project in early 1985,
McAuliffe returned to that foundational moment for both herself and the space
program, writing
on her application, “I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like
to participate.” NASA official Alan
Ladwig would later note that McAuliffe was chosen from among the ten
finalists for the project due to her “infectious enthusiasm,” and it seems
clear that that enthusiasm was both specific to the history of the space
program and thus a genuine part of McAuliffe’s perspective for many decades by
that mid-80s moment.
Obviously that throughline makes for a compelling and ultimately tragic
side to the story of McAuliffe’s selection for this unique role on a doomed
mission. But I would argue that other details about her work as a history and
social studies teacher together comprise an even more powerfully symbolic
reflection of what she brought to the Challenger. For one thing, she got
her
Master’s in Education from Maryland’s Bowie State University, an HBCU;
there were geographic reasons for the choice (she and her husband lived in
Maryland at the time), but I have to think the experience affected her future
work as an educator in a variety of inclusive ways. For another thing, during
her subsequent time at Concord High School in New Hampshire (where she was
working when selected for the project) she created a new course entitled “The
American Woman,” which “explored the history of the United States from the
female perspective.” And for a third thing, according to a
New York Times profile in her teaching she “emphasized the impact of
ordinary people on history, saying they were as important to the historical
record as kings, politicians or generals.” I can’t imagine a more pitch-perfect
combination for this first teacher-astronaut.
There’s one more detail about McAuliffe’s biography that I haven’t
seen highlighted in as many stories, and that while small adds another
compelling layer to her symbolic identity. McAuliffe’s great-uncle was Philip
Khuri Hitti, the Lebanese-American historian and educator who became one of
the most influential figures in
that community as well as in the development of the discipline of Arabic
Studies. I can’t find any clear info about whether the two knew each other or
not, but I still love the throughline between that groundbreaking educator and
the inspiring teacher his great-niece would become. In one of her interviews about
the Teacher in Space Project, McAuliffe
exclaimed, “Imagine me teaching from space, all over the world, touching so
many people's lives. That's a teacher's dream! I have a vision of the world as
a global village, a world without boundaries. Imagine a history teacher making
history!" Long before her tragic death (although only amplified by it, if
in painfully ironic ways), McAuliffe had already done that, extending the
legacy of her historic relative and making her a truly perfect choice for this
symbolically American role.
Next ChallengerStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Challenger memories or reflections
you’d share?
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