The Grand Experiment

I've reached a period of duldrums where my stories are repetitive and my successes infrequent. My posts have begun to taper off not because I've lost interest - far from it - but because the reason to write is simply not there. I celebrated a pretty big success last Friday when a girl in one of my classes that had checked out on me some time ago suddenly applied herself and earned a 100 on a map of Europe test.

This is a girl that four weeks ago looked at me and called Italy "Africa." She now can point to Slovenia and Estonia with confidence and is tutoring other students in geography. I want to celebrate this, to take credit for it, and indeed, I do both. But morale is so low among the faculty anymore that this twinkle in the night is not elating me as I should hope it would under ordinary circumstances.

Progress Reports went home recently. I have so many students failing that if I were a public school teacher, I'd be reprimanded. What times do we live in...? A wise man once told me that the world didn't work the way I thought it did. One day, I'd grow up, get my first pay check, and truly understand what it means to pay taxes. Some day finally came... I've grown up. And the world is not a pretty place. Certainly it has its beauty, its wonder, its moments that remind us that life is worth living, but all in all, we live in a pretty awful place we humans.

Michelle Obama said in a speech recently that for the first time in her adult life, she's proud of her country. Many people took offense to that remark. I did not. And that is primarily because she did not say, "For the first time in my life, I love my country." She used pride. I can agree with that, but I have to say, I've yet to find myself proud of the country that I love.

America began as a grand experiment in participatory democracy. The experiment was tested time and time again. To this day, liberty and "freedom" endure in America as they do in few other places, but what country can be called free that is shackled by debt, crippled by poverty, and increasingly blinded by what is a loathsome ignorance? I cannot be proud of that. I drive streets where people triple park without consequence, and I teach students that would rather text in some sub-English language rather than revel in the beauty of proper English. I cannot be proud of that.

My students are skipping school, lying to their parents, involving themselves with less than reputable individuals, saying a collective "F*ck you" to the faculty by not doing our homework, and all but gving up on material that, frankly, belongs in a Middle School. THIS is America. I teach and live and breathe in America.

Whether people like it or not, whether they realize it or not, America is not destined for the sunlit uplands our Founding Father saw in the rising sun of George Washington's chair. Thomas Jefferson knew that the lifeblood of a democracy endures because of education, that a people's future can be predicted by looking at their children. America is a grand experiment in participatory democracy heading for dark times. We're certainly not a failure yet, but our children are failing left and right -- and they'll be in charge someday. What of our grand experiment then?