What is School For?

Today I read with interest the New York Times "Sunday Opinion" insert on the state of our country's schools post pandemic.

As a former teacher and a parent and grandparent, I am passionate about the subject of education. It might even be the subject of my next book that I finish after the one I'm working on at the moment.

The New York Times insert touched on the many troublesome concerns that pertain to the American educational scene today from critical race theory, to social mobility, to meritocracy, to hope, to wasting time and money, to making citizens, to bonding with nature, to learning to read. There were even a few thoughts and photos by teenage students and teachers and a story about parent activists. The main articles were written by variety of authors and educators and professors. 

I found the different views fascinating even though I did not always agree with everyone's analysis.

For example, the article on citizenship by Heather McGee and Victor Ray favored much more radically a curriculum that exposes in much greater detail the inequities of racism in the past. I personally am a "just the facts" person so I probably might talk about Thomas Jefferson and his contribution to the making of America today without going into the details of his personal life. I might offer going deeper into Jefferson's life as an extra-curricular subject a student could pursue on his own. On the other hand, there are many facts to learn about slavery itself, i.e. that much of it was economic from the beginning and that even Abraham Lincoln was trying to figure out a way to find a solution to the problem from a humane point of view as well as political point of view. That topic might be a good one for a class discussion.

I so want us all to get along and am willing to make compromises in America. but not at the cost of embracing the importance of education for all if we are to maintain a successful country.  

There so many disparities in points of view about the subject of education from the libertarian view that we should all be free to educate our children the way we want to those who insist we rewrite our entire history to be more inclusive. Of course, this is America and we all have a right to disagree.

Bottom line, though I think we need to have a cohesive belief in what it means to be an American and how we can best carry out this belief. To me, as the PBS travel host Rick Steves said, it means educating our children so that they can make rational decisions about what it takes to keep those beliefs. Then it's up to them to take what they have learned and make us and our country even better.

Mimi Pockross is a freelance writer and the author of three books. Currently she is working on her fourth book, a novel about immigration and assimilation.

Mount Rushmore and Beyond, A Wild Ride

 It's been a while since my husband and I have taken a road trip. This one was with our adorable grandchildren, ages 10 and 13 and our destination was Mount Rushmore, a place my husband and I had visited once before and one that I had visited with my parents when I was growing up, one of many road trips I took as a child.

But my eyes had never looked at the monument quite like it did this time. That's the beauty of revisiting places you've visited in the past.

Several things caught my attention, several political. 

I found it interesting that South Dakota was looking for a way to draw people to their state when they settled in on creating Mount Rushmore. The original idea advocated by the state historian was to focus on Western heroes, but when they engaged their US Senator and hired the sculptor, the emphasis became more national.  Another interesting tidbit was that the sculptor, a Danish immigrant named Gutzon Borglum, after insisting that the sculpture be national in nature and timeless in its relevance to history, and who was a Republican, voted for Calvin Coolidge, a Democrat because he supported the project over Coolidge's opposing contender. I also found it interesting why each of the four presidents were chosen, i.e. each represented an "eternal reminder of the birth, growth, preservation and development of a nation dedicated to democracy and the pursuit of individual liberty." Washington because he was the father of the country who chose not to be a king, Jefferson, not for his role in the Declaration of Independence, but for expanding the country by half with the Louisiana Purchase under his presidency, Lincoln for saving the Union, and Theodore Roosevelt who, by building the Panama Canal, expanded trade for the country and for the world and who encouraged the business side of the country's goals. 

To see people from all parts of the country and of the world come together to marvel at the accomplishment that began in 1927 and culminated in 1941 after fourteen years of hard work and clever innovation, made me feel that there is hope for our country. Mount Rushmore to me renewed my belief in democracy. Even though I did see different representations of America, for example, the Amish, a few Black families, some bikers that were attending the nearby Sturgis rally, I still felt there weren't enough of us Americans there to see this incredible site and to rethink what makes our country great. 

Another new observation occurred to me as I traveled to and from my destination, that of the country surrounding the site, the cowboy culture of the West, the rise and fall of the indigenous people, the gold rushers, the collective dissatisfaction of visitors like the bikers and ranchers and residents who reside in the wide open spaces of Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota. It's a different world out there. One can start a bit to understand why they value their independence and why, somehow or another, they need to be brought in under the big tent of democracy as spokesman as well.