How Then Shall We Educate?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 10/16/20

            For yours truly December of 2019 ended a 53-year stint as a teacher. Many things changed from 1966 to 2019 but students stayed the same, being always predictable, always exciting and excitable, and above all, always malleable. Even the rebels and smart alecs were malleable. Many teachers will disagree with this, but based on my own 5-decade experience, students simply never changed. But their parents did, as did the world around them.

            Over the years it has been amazing and puzzling that students were not more deeply affected by their changing world. Societal changes and attitudes did not make them smarter, lazier, better students, or worse students. 53 years have not changed youth’s desire for acceptance or their need for guidance.

The first societal shift during my half-century of teaching was divorce. I observed fellow teachers as they cushioned the harsh blow of divorce for countless students, shepherding them through their time of sad disruption. But divorce doesn’t change human nature or the resilience of youth.    

In 1966 the school counselor at Northwest Jr. High in Meridian, Mississippi announced at a faculty meeting that a student’s parents were getting a divorce. She urged the faculty to pay special attention to the student. Instantly a collective, audible and sorrowful moan spread over the faculty. So unusual was such news that silence prevailed for several seconds. Divorce led to sad children and angry teenagers, but it didn’t affect teachability for very long. Teachers filled the emotional gap, ministering to hurt while trying to keep English, math, history, etc. at the center of things. If only educational experts from afar could understand what teachers must do and gladly do in order to help students learn.

There is and always will be in students a potential for good and for evil, for greatness and mediocrity, for accomplishment and dependency. As one wordsmith put it, there is in all of us a potential Hitler or a Mother Theresa. The one we become is the one we feed.

The question is what have we been feeding our children and youth? Of late at the college level and often in public schools, we have fed them “diversity/sensitivity training.” Is there anything more shallow, wrongheaded, or un-American? As currently packaged, such “training” is actually obedience training, in both the corporate world and in education. There is A Way we are supposed to think, and shame on those who don’t accept it. There is A Way/The Way to view gender and sexuality (it’s up for grabs), abortion (it’s choice), racism (it’s systemic), immigration (it’s inconsequential), America (she’s not exceptional), and education (it should be therapeutic).

This not so new gospel was addressed as long ago as 1895 when American novelist Stephen Crane penned these words: “Think as I think, said a man / Or you are abominably wicked. / You are a toad. / And after I had thought of it, / I said, I will then be a toad.”

Crane and other late 19^th century writers focused on the theme of individuality versus conformity. To them, the societal pressure from the nation’s increasing urbanization was affecting people’s ability to think independently. How ironic that universities, formerly viewed as centers for reflection and intelligent debate of ideas and issues, have become centers of conformity. How odd that corporations would go soft and hop on the “sensitivity” bandwagon. “Sensitivity” is all about feelings, and feelings are now the main concern of the university. Forget the sometimes harsh but true facts of history. Forget knowledge. Forget intellectual stretching.

Higher education’s reputation for free inquiry is currently in tatters. Its concern is our supposedly racist, sexist, homophobic society which needs diversifying.  Its diversity emphasis sounds tolerant but it has the makings of manipulation. Today’s college students are expected to goose-step to academia’s party line.

The grandchildren of children of the 60s haven’t changed either. In the 60s, student riots and violence were on campuses. Today they are on city streets. But they are guided by the same spirit, anti-Americanism.

Objective subject matter knowledge can afford students opportunity. Catering to students cannot. Diminishing the trades and arguing that everyone should go to college cannot either.

There are simple, time honored ways to achieve what “diversity and sensitivity training’ supposedly seek: Teach, yea require, children and youths to respect others, no matter the color of their skin. Assure them the world is not fair. Make clear to them that they are not the center of the universe. Model kindness, generosity, and forgiveness.

These are mighty old concepts, but once we start living by them, diversity/sensitivity will follow. And it will be genuine, not faked, forced, or packaged in a school curriculum or in a corporation’s required “workshop.”

 

Roger Hines

 

 

 

 

 

                             The Source of our Discontent

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/2/20

            It is both relevant and fair to pose the following questions: Who is chiefly responsible for the nation’s partisan divide and our inflamed political discourse? Who started the acrimony and still feeds it constantly? Who has obviously sought to use that divide for their own political gain?

            Sometimes questions can be answered with other questions. For instance who in 2016 refused to accept the results of the presidential election? Who, instead of accepting defeat and serving as the loyal opposition, has since sought to personally discredit the duly elected candidate at every turn? Who went unsuccessfully from “collusion, collusion” to “Russia, Russia” to “ventilators, ventilators” to impeachment, to “ineffectiveness in a time of pandemic” to “the president hasn’t paid his taxes,” further indicating their disregard for a legitimate election? On whose side of the political divide are the thuggish, destructive “protestors” and their cheerleaders?

            Furthermore, who abandoned the time-honored tradition of losing an election with honor, then working to elect their preferred candidate in the next election? Conservatives never behaved so unseemly during the eight years that gave them gay marriage, apology tours, initiation of socialized medicine, and warnings about “cynical voters who cling to guns or religion.”   

            These questions require no pondering. We all know the answers.

            Precisely our division is centered on race, economic ideology, and our political system itself, that is, how we are governed. Regarding our political system, the divide is a matter of representative government versus government by unelected judges, bureaucrats, and “experts.” Regarding the economy and economic ideology, the division is purely and simply capitalism versus socialism. As for race, the division is supposedly over justice versus injustice. In order to achieve justice, it is apparently now legitimate to bash store fronts, shoot cops, and set cities aflame.

            The most foundational of these three areas is our political system. America is a representative democracy. Understanding that a pure democracy is functionally impossible in a continental nation, we elect people to speak and vote for us. This system is now under attack. Abolish the Electoral College, the dividers are crying, knowing full well that doing so would leave rural America and small states out of the loop, bestowing total electoral power upon the population centers of the nation.                                               

            And just which party now controls the major population centers of the nation? Which one wants to further “transform” our political system by packing the Supreme Court?

            Another source of our discontent is the unabashed embrace of socialism by Bernie Sanders. Ditto the Democrat Party’s joyful embrace of Sanders and his Children’s Crusade. Their claim that public schools and Social Security render us socialist already indicates their need to return to 12^th grade economics. From the very start America has thrived from capitalism. It was a Democrat, Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, who thundered from the Senate floor, “If we’re gonna have capitalism, we gotta have capital, and if we’re gonna have capital, we gotta have capitalists.” Long’s party has long since morphed. Its face is that of 20-somethings who truly believe there is such a thing as free stuff.  

            As for race, a quick relevant story that’s close to my heart: Fifty years ago a personal friend became head football coach at the high school I attended in Forest, Mississippi. 1970 was the first year of integration in Forest. Coach Gary Risher’s team was undefeated and won their conference title. His assistant was James Clark who had been head coach at the Black school, E.T. Hawkins High. Only 6 of Coach Clark’s players chose to remain on the team. Two weeks ago all 6 Black players attended a halftime program that honored the 1970 team, including Edmond Harvey who drove from Las Vegas and picked up Lee Evans in Shreveport to head toward Forest. When my brother Carlton related to me the news of this exciting event, he added, “Tells you something about Forest.”

            Which it does. It also reminds me that here in Georgia I observe good race relations every week of my life. Yet, charges of racism have become the standard cudgel of the party that doesn’t seem to like their country.

            No one can blame conservatives for the nation’s great divide. On election night of 2008 conservatives accepted their fate, assumed the role of the loyal opposition, and set their sights on 2012. Let’s see if Democrats will do likewise come November 3^rd by calling off their thugs, checking their obsession with race, and acknowledging that Forest, Mississippi is a microcosm of the entire nation. In fact, a good nation that is not racist and that will never tolerate the group-think and collectivism Democrats are planning for us.

 

Roger Hines

9/30/20