Lord Brougham |
I seem to be very much the odd person here. I certainly didn't expect, when I resigned from a college teaching position to come here, because I wanted to make a difference for kids, that I would be confronted with something like this. It is particularly ironic that Maine, which has always been a vigorous defender of the rights of the individual, has so lost its heritage that now the slogan should read, "As the nation goes, so goes Maine!" Dirigo is now turned on its head. This is not the Maine I remember from 25 years ago, but then, this isn't the nation I remember from then, either. Even with all the troubles we had then, I still believed it was possible for the individual to maintain some of the liberties which the Bill of Rights tried to promise us. Now I fear we might as well fold up our tents and wander off into the sunset.
Yet, I can't. Not without further effort to at least make life less convenient for our legislators, governors, and anyone else who has forgotten what this country is supposed to be.
When I took this stand, I was prepared for the worst. The worst has come. I feel sorry for those it affects the most, and I don't believe we are the ones it affects the most (unless we let it). We are leaving a profession filled with people who have continually allowed themselves to be disrespected. They are getting more of it. We are not.
John Hunt Once proud to be a teacher Now proud to be an ex-teacher
The danger in the new fingerprinting law is not the new law, but how easily the general public accepted it. The voice that is my conscience screams to fight for those resisting government intrusion, but my heart tells me there are not enough sensible Americans left to win.
I saw an interview with Joni Mitchell a couple of weeks ago and she was asked why she didn't have any new songs coming out. She replied, "these are shallow times" and that the world didn't want to hear music with a message. I keep hearing those words, "shallow times." It makes my heart ache. Somehow I don't think this is over. I don't know how yet, but I would love to be a thorn in the side of folks who think fingerprinting, taking blood and urine, putting tracking devices in cars, etc. is all a good idea.
I know what you mean about feeling sick about teaching. Yesterday morning I tried again to picture myself going through with being fingerprinted just to keep that paper that says I am a professional and certified teacher. I actually got through the door and up to the pad - but my hands just wouldn't go any further. Then I realized, even if I did go through with it, that piece of paper called a "Professional Certificate" would no longer mean a damn thing! It would represent moving in a police state direction that I have no intentions of becoming part of - at least not so easily! (God I hope they don't try to pull this crap with our driver's liscences!)
I will leave you with a story, because it gave me a small sense of the need for wisdom you spoke of in your letter to me. As I was driving to school yesterday I remembered a woman I had met quite a few years ago. We just happend to be sitting under a pavilion together, looking out across the Atlantic, enjoying the day when we struck up conversation. She had just celebrated her 92nd birthday and she began to tell me this amazing story about her life as a young girl in Germnay. Her father was a professor at the University and she was in her early 20s when the Nazis began to take over. She went around to the various universities and anyplace who would have her, and spoke out against the Nazis and their propaganda. She said she remembered being struck by how complacent most people were, they thought the things she said couldn't possibly be true, she was over-reacting. Yet she drew a good-sized crowd when she spoke. Her father had a friend who was in the SS and he said she needed to stop, she had gained the attention of some powerful men and they didn't like what she was saying - well she didn't stop. Her father's friend came to him and told him the SS would be coming for her the next day, so arrangements were made to sneak her out of the country. I told her she should write her story down for her grandchildren. She said they didn't want to hear her old stories - it was from another time and they thought she was making them up. She had a certain sadness about her yet there was a certain look in her eye and an integrity she carried with her at knowing she had tried to do something about a power so much bigger than herself. It is a feeling I carry with me today. I wish I could convey the pride I remembered seeing in her as she shared her story - I am glad to be in company with such a woman and with the people of MEAF.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge."
I feel like teachers, generally speaking, have no sense of self-worth or empowerment. How can we teach our students to go off and grab all that they can out of what we call life, when we can't or won't do it ourselves???!!!
It may be that we need to consider forming a union of former educators dedicated to organizing and empowering educators. Again, forgive me for saying so, but how can we encourage our best students and/or our own children to be teachers when you consider the big picture, i.e., lack of respect, a poor retirement system, etc., etc.
Let there be no mistake, civil rights was a small part of what this has been all about for me. Oh how I wish that we could fast forward and someone who had the wisdom to compile data could show everyone that this was not the answer. Damn the principals and superintendents who supported this and know the dirty truth is that they have done, and are doing, a lousy job of supervising and holding people accountable. Civil rights not withstanding, I will be damned if I will let our "educational leaders" make themselves look better and feel better at the expense of my dignity and pride.
Perhaps as a teacher of gifted students, I am fortunate not to be responsible for pulling the freight cars of the train of curriculum, burdened as they (and so many of you) are with spelling, the times tables, the Periodic Table of the Elements or any of the host of things kids need to know but which are not why we became teachers. Most of the time--and until Wednesday evening I gloried in this--I was lucky often to get to run the Broadway Limited (my great-grandfather would appreciate this, as he used to build locomotives at the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia), to streamline the curriculum to its magnificent essentials: the ability to carefully define a problem, to gather all manner of information that bore upon it, to think flexibly and dispassionately while still riding the excitement of the search, the exploration and the discovery of new worlds, and finally to come to a best solution that was both ingenious and person-centered.
Our experience in Augusta has shaken my belief in all this to its core. I felt so sick both Thursday and Friday at school that I had to leave at noon and go home. It is Sunday evening and for the first time in four days I do not have stomach cramps and dizziness. I will go to school again tomorrow morning, where first and second graders wait for "Bernie!" in sublime innocence of what is taking place around them, among their teachers, and finally to their futures. I will try hard to teach them with my customary delight and calculated foolishness, all the while trying to lift them, tease them into the light and point out the marvels of the learned world that is their only final security.
But this is going to be a long week, I fear. And at some point this week, or the next, but soon anyhow, I will have to make a decision. My certificates expire in 2003. If I can restore my belief in the purpose of education, I will try to go on until then. You all know how hard this will be, though, since you have each seen hordes of legislators, department bureaucrats, the Governor, the State Police, our school administrators, the media, even our feckless union, all fail to be able to do that most essential thing we are charged with teaching to children: to think clearly and deeply, without prejudice.
If I can't recover that faith in learning, in the redeeming power of true problem-solving, I will need to leave, for students must have teachers who, above all else, believe in what they are doing. I have alluded to you before how alarmingly like the Vietnam Era this appears to be, where ordinary people knew the truth but could only barely slow the juggernaut of big government, of unexamined patriotism, of reactionary and ancient emotion. I am nearing retirement age, anyhow, and so am less concerned for what this will mean for me than for many of you and, of course, for our students.
But while things are clearly dark for at least 54 educators--and many more, I'm sure, time will reveal--who stood up for their most profound beliefs and were ignored, we still don't really know what might happen. There is talk of litigation, of court challenges, and of course--somewhere, sometime--these will certainly take place, and the Fourth Amendment will be rediscovered in all of its simple common sense. So while I'm going to concentrate right now on recovering and on finding what I must soon do to stay OK, the MEAFline will stay open. Any of you can, of course, talk to all of us simply by copying that slug of a contact list and speaking up.
I hope you do.
Bernie