Last night’s Tate lecture was a refreshing change of pace. The series featured documentary filmmaker Ken Burns discussing his films, as well as American history.

Ed Board is glad to see the Lecture series bring in someone that students wouldn’t likely see anywhere else.

The other members of the 2004-2005 lecture series are journalists, authors and politicians, all personages available to students through other media.

Burns presented an interesting interpretation of the American culture, and how certain aspects of it, such as baseball or jazz relate to us, as an American society.

He said that the question being answered by each one of his documentaries is “Who are we Americans as people?”

Ed Board believes that Burns has done a fine job of answering this question, and also an amazing job of making history more accessible to the American public.

As Burns said, “history has become like castor oil, we know it’s good for us, but it doesn’t taste good.”

We hope that his documentaries are the turning point away from this feeling.

Some of Burns’ most insightful commentary came in response to audience inquiries.

He was asked what he felt about the lack of written records in today’s “disposable society”.

He responded that it is our responsibility as Americans and members of this era to “write letters and keep journals,” and talk to our grandparents and learn their stories.

He believes that to be the key to making history tangible, the link between major events and our lives must be made.

Ed Board couldn’t agree more, and while this doesn’t mean that we’re going to keep every letter from our parents in a safety deposit box, it does mean that we see the need to have at least some written record. E-mail accounts don’t last forever you know.

Burns is also a strong supporter of the Constitution, and in response to a question about his views on the “extremist views taught in some of our classrooms”, he responded, “We can’t be afraid of ideas!”

He went on to explain that our students (us that is) are smart enough to ignore extremist teachings, and look up the information ourselves.

Ed Board couldn’t agree more.

We hope that all students take time to investigate fully the things that they are being taught.

We also hope that more students make the effort to attend these lectures., The next lecture features Laurie Garrett, a journalist known for her knowledge on healthcare and disease. The next lecture takes place Tuesday, March 22 at 8 p.m. in Mc Farlin Auditorium.