[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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