CHALLENGES FOR THE NEW SCHOOL
YEAR
September 1, 2010
I write this as Labor Day approaches.
Labor Day means that the PCT membership, like teachers throughout the
country, are experiencing the pre-school jitters – wondering what their
students will be like, thinking about what they will talk about on opening day,
experiencing the similar emotions to those of any performer.
Only this performance goes on for 180 days.
No matter how many times one has done it, for most of us, Labor Day
Weekend is consumed with more than thoughts of the history of labor.
We open school this year at a very troubling time.
A sputtering economy has brought with it what difficult economic times
often do, a substantial narrowing of our sense of what it means to be American. Our
students today are being bombarded with stimuli that encourage nativist bigotry,
the surrender of personal freedom for some illusory safety, a belief that
government is the enemy of its citizenry and a belief that if only the super
rich were unfettered of government regulation and taxes, our country would
prosper as never before. While it
may be a subversive idea in some circles, I believe very deeply we have an
obligation as teachers to discuss these notions with our students in age
appropriate ways. As a young
teacher, I read the late Neil Postman’s Teaching
As a Subversive Activity which I’ve been drawn back to in times like
these.
Take the anti-immigrant tide sweeping our nation.
It’s imperative, if we are really educators, that the bigotry that our
students easily confuse with love of country be rebutted.
We’ve reached the absurd point where because our president has an
unusual name, a significant number of ignorant Americans believe he was not born
in the
United States
. There is no serious question but
that the successive waves of immigration have enriched this country and
contributed to its competitive edge. Until
the advent of the
United States
, there had never been a nation that could bring together so many different
people of so many different nationalities and religions and races and meld, in
many cases, historic enemies, into the greatest nation on earth.
Sure we need to control our borders and respect the rule of law, but when
Microsoft builds a campus in
Vancouver
because it is easier to get visas for foreign scientists and engineers in
Canada
than it is in the
United States
, we need to change the laws. The
best and the brightest still want to come here.
We will keep them out at our peril. Teach
the children that immigration has and will be the life-blood of our country.
I know we were attacked on 9/11. Like
most Americans, I want to do everything I can reasonably do to prevent another
attack. Is it reasonable, however, to be so pre-occupied with safety that we
blithely tolerate surveillance cameras everywhere, laws like the Patriot Act
(Just the name ought to make us a bit suspicious of it.) and a growing ability
to know where every American is at any given moment.
That’s the kind of thing we used to cringe to think about, so deeply
have our ideas of freedom been. FREEDOM
– We need to get students thinking about the importance of freedom if we are
to continue to enjoy it. The history
of the
United States
has been a general expansion of person freedom.
The
United States
has always been suspicious of government, but we have arrived at a point in our
history when a committed minority on the extreme right of the political spectrum
has systematically demonized government seeking to cast it as our enemy or at
the very least completely inept. Unless
you teach them, students can’t know that Social Security
and Medicare have rescued millions of senior citizens from the ravages of
poverty that was the lot of many when I was young.
Unless you teach them, government regulation will be anathema to them.
They probably will not hear of how environmental laws have us breathing
cleaner air than we did before they came into being.
They won’t know of the workplace safety laws that, while still in need
of improvement, have reduced the number of deaths and maiming of countless
American workers. If we don’t
teach them, they will just inherit the view of too many of our contemporaries -
the government takes your tax dollars and wastes them on things we would be
better off without. If we don’t
teach them otherwise, don’t wonder when they support the privatization of
schools and other vital services that decent societies provide through their
government.
One more
challenge for you as we start a new school year.
Find ways to engage our students in discussions of our media environment.
Students need to learn to authenticate information in a web world in
which we are barraged with opinion masquerading as fact making it very difficult
for them to tell the difference. They
need to be asked to also confront the belief many of them have that they can
multi-task without any cognitive consequences.
The jury is in. They can’t.
They know more than we do usually about how to work the technology.
Too many are ignorant about what to appropriately do with it.
Teach them. And yes, get good
test results too.