User blog:Tiamatwizard/Pros & Cons of Using Hetalia in the Classroom

Over two days, I learned the benefits and the dangers of using Hetalia in the classroom.

Day 1

We had just started the chapter over WWII (do you see where this is going already?), and since this is a major event in American history, we're taking longer than usual on it. Once we finished questions over the first section, we had a discussion.

The first section was mainly on how WWI kind of led up to WWII; it just created more problems instead of fixing them. It also went over how Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin came into power.

As my teacher started to explain just how...well, insane these guys were, he mentioned that Mussolini was kind of a 'wanna-be' compared to the other two.

Now, get in your head the image of Italy standing next to Russia and Germany, with all their toughness. If you smile, you can see why I had trouble holding in my laughter.

It gets worse. Mr. Teacher went on to explain just how insane Stalin was by giving us a number of how many deaths he pretty much caused. Millions.

The night before, I had read a profile of Russia describing him as "the kid who will stomp on ants with a smile on his face."

If you smiled at that description...

Yes. That is horrible. I can't even believe I had shown a -happy- emotion when we went over that. It's not that I believed what we were discussing was funny, Dear God no, what I was laughing at was the mental images I got about Hetalia from hearing it. In fact, I'm still feeling disgusted.

Day 2

Continuing on to Section 2, also known as "This Section Covers Germany Starting It's Invasion of It's Near-by Countries + Defeat of France & English Blitz". Instead of a discussion, we had a quiz.

Now, then. Seeing as I was feeling really bad for Day 1, I didn't even try to study. Who knew what reaction I would get this time?

As I got the quiz, I saw that some of the questions went like this:

- "Invasion of Poland (date) - _________"

- "Ended WWI, Caused Problems Leading to WWII - Treaty of ________"

- ""Phoney War" (British) = "_________" (German)"

Oh.

OH.

I just watched this Hetalia episode/read a fanfic on this last night!

I ended up finishing in under less than a minute. Perfect score.

If I've learned anything, it's this: Hetalia's good and all, but you reeeeeally have to keep yourself in check when it comes to actually appying it to school.

Actually, that's for all anime/manga in general.

Anyone got any similar stories to share?

I would love to discuss this.