Voices From Chernobyl Analysis

Voices from Chernobyl: Meant for Science or History Class?

Voices from Chernobyl is an important resource for anyone dreaming of becoming any kind of scientist one day. If one is going to conduct experiments, it is crucial that person knows the fire they’re playing with. In other words, one must be fully aware of the consequences of their experiment, especially if it goes wrong. All a disaster takes is for one incorrect step, calculation, or error of any kind for an experiment to go wrong, and in Chernobyl’s case, simple design flaws and slight coincidences led to an explosion that took thousands of lives and still continues to have an impact on the environment today. So, in this case, it is perfectly logical that students read this book in chemistry classes as a sort of cautionary tale. Students set on becoming scientists when they grow up need to know the possible repercussions of their experiments and the impact they can have on both the environment and innocent civilians in case their procedures go wrong.
A major part of English and Social studies classes is reading personal narratives from times of disasters in order to learn more about history and human nature. In these classes, students often use memoirs and autobiographical texts to get first-hand accounts of influential events because they provide different perspectives about the event, while a textbook might just be one-sided, indifferent, and unsympathetic towards everyone involved in the event. So an argument can be made that Voices from Chernobyl should stay out of chemistry classes and introduced to English and history classes