Our Differing American Opinions

            I was speaking with a colleague today about the Women’s March on Washington, which she had attended on Saturday. She was telling me about how inspiring, peaceful and effective it had been, and how great it felt to march with her daughters. I had heard similar praise for the march from others who had attended, from students to fellow teachers to my own wife and daughter.

My journalism students also received a lot of praise this weekend for their special inauguration edition of our school paper, in which they reached out to teens and young adults around the country and the world for their opinions on the new president and the issues that matter to them. The issue featured a variety of viewpoints and priorities, all of them shared respectfully.

One of the stories in that inauguration edition was about a “Love Trumps Hate” sign that had hung on a resident’s fence, but had been defaced and vandalized. A variety of neighbors, from both political parties, stepped in to replace the sign, and spoke to our student-reporters about the importance of working together. It was a tremendous story, one that served as a metaphor of sorts for the past two months in our country.

The same day the story was published, the replacement sign was stolen.

I’ve come to the realization, as many others have, that the disagreements we see now in American society will not be ending anytime soon. This is not necessarily a cause for concern; vigorous debate is, after all, the lifeblood of a democracy. Of course, the concern is typically over the issue that’s being debated, be it war, policy, individual rights or, in this case, the words and actions that leaders choose to define the course of our republic.

As I spoke with my colleague about the march this afternoon, I asked her for some perspective. She is a generation older than I am, so she was around for Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. Did this feel similar, I asked? Yes, she said, it did. During Vietnam, you had disagreements within your own family, she reminded me. This is much the same. She was not trying to compare a new president to the deaths of young men and women in Southeast Asia; she was simply trying to explain the extreme differences of opinion visible in society itself.

            As I spoke with my student-journalists today, I asked them to think about the issues they want to address in the weeks ahead. The kinds of stories we might typically cover, such as school policies and student achievements, will remain important – but they’ll likely be overshadowed by the next march, or the latest online dispute, or the words and decisions of our leaders. These are extraordinary times, I told them. It’s time to start making a list of the stories you want to cover. What does “America first” mean to different individuals? Is our news media indeed biased? How do the women who marched around the world plan to follow up Saturday’s powerful step? What do the words in the inaugural address mean to different people?

            And perhaps most important of all, how is each individual planning to navigate the reality of our differing American opinions? Friday’s inaugural address followed by Saturday’s march clarified the state of our nation right now: The idea of a country divided is no longer confined to the ballot box or to Facebook; we saw it in person this weekend. And we will continue to experience it with our friends, family and peers – both in person and online. It’s time to determine how we’re going to step into these waters. Because they are rising, and unless we’re taking a boat to Canada, we’ve got to steer our way through using the tools of democracy that generations past have used. No one promises it will be easy, but these tools have been tested before, and they have worked.

            As for my students and me, we will get back to the tool we know best – a free and responsible press – and we’ll go from there.

Dialogue, the Declaration, and Democracy

           In American schools, English and social studies teachers spend considerable time and effort teaching about civil rights and the struggle for equality. History units focus on slavery, women’s suffrage, the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, World War II internment camps and immigration. English teachers read books ranging from To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color of Water to Night and Maus to The House on Mango Street and The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Many of my most memorable lessons as a teacher have involved discussions about equality, in which I’ve asked tough questions and heard amazing, insightful answers.

            In a lot of ways, these discussions are part of the greatest American dialogue we can have. Back in 1776, a group of leaders issued the most famous press release in history. Billed as the Declaration of Independence, this document did more than just announce plans for a revolution – it also promised the type of country this revolution would bring. Thomas Jefferson borrowed some of the wording from other documents, but when it was all put together he had crafted the most important sentence in American history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

            The story of America is the story of a country that is constantly moving toward and away from the promise of that sentence. The Declaration is not a law; it’s just an announcement. But it has become the closest thing to a sacred document our nation has, and that’s why it’s been quoted and cited by leaders during times when increased equality was within sight – from Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech to Barack Obama in his Second Inaugural Address. The Declaration will continue to serve as the barometer by which we measure our democracy.

            Teachers have a responsibility to continue holding the kinds of discussions that students and, frankly, all Americans have been having for these past 240 years. If there are questions raised about where we measure up against the Declaration’s promise, we need to ask them. What is different in 2016 is that instead of discussing issues of equality in an institutional sense, we’re also addressing them in the context of the Oval Office. Does our president-elect value equality and justice for all? That is a fair question, and it is not disrespectful toward him for us to ask this question in our classrooms.

            In my last post, I wrote about the importance of caring deeply for all my students, including those who support different political candidates and hold different political views than I do. That is unquestionable. But it is equally essential that our classrooms be used to continue the dialogue that fuels our democracy. To refrain from asking such questions out of fear would be an insult to the words that established our nation. This is no time for English and social studies teachers to hold our tongues. That’s not a matter of pushing an agenda; it’s a matter of fulfilling a curriculum.