The Memorial Day Question

And so we have reached another Memorial Day.  The parades are parading.  The flags are waving.

The memories are unfolding.

The memories.

For that is what Memorial Day is, right?  "Memory" is the etymological and emotional root of "Memorial Day."

And I, like many other Americans, am remembering my own family members and friends who served in the military.

But this morning I also awoke with a question, nestled beside my memories.

Exactly what are we memorializing?

The answers to this question can be found in thousands of news stories, carved into marble headstones, etched onto dedicated art works.  The answers can be heard in interviews and speeches and in music.

We are memorializing pain.

And sacrifice.

And loss.

We are memorializing the cost of war, the price we as a nation are convinced we must pay for peace.

We are memorializing the bravery that everyday men and women had to (and have to) pull from deep within themselves to meet unimaginable challenges.

We are paying tribute to the soldiers who did not return home. And we are paying tribute to the soldiers who did return home, but burdened with haunting visions, missing limbs, wounds visible and invisible.

Memorial Day is a day for reflection and gratitude of course, but it is also a day to deeply consider why this pain and sacrifice, this loss and bravery continue to be demanded.

It is  a day to recommit ourselves to a vision of peace.

This morning I woke up wondering why our national and personal memorials to the burdens of war and conflict are not balanced by an equally dedicated celebration of peace.  A day where the speeches and editorials, celebrations and debates center on personal, national and global peace.

I woke up wondering if we, as a nation and world, could even envision a world at peace.

Not a perfect world, for perfection is an unattainable goal.

But a world without bloody conflict, without red-button trigger fingers trembling over nuclear arsenals.  A world without sudden marketplace car bombs.  A world where we no longer had child soldiers or refugees risking their lives on leaky escape boats.

A world where we cared for each other amid our differences instead of killing and wounding each other because of them.

Whether explicit or subconscious,  peace is the rock-hard reason behind the  military sacrifices we remember on this day.

Peace MUST be the reason.

As I watch my fellow Americans blur their Memorial day awareness, sadness and contemplation behind red, white and blue buntings, bright flags, barbecues and parades, I wonder if we've forgotten--if we're no longer really aware of what it is we are remembering and why.

Once we lose sight of this, can we really ever achieve peace?

Defining Leaders

I was driving home today and, as usual, NPR radio voices filled the car.

The story playing during my drive was centered on leadership lessons taught at West Point Naval Academy.  A male senior cadet was describing a serious mistake he had made during the week-long survival training required for all West Point students before graduation.

It was the last day of survival training and he was cleaning his gun (which, for the exercise, contained only blank rounds).  An overlooked round had remained in the chamber and went off--a serious no-no in a training situation designed to prepare soldiers to move undetected through potential enemy territory.

The discussion turned to the lengthy lecture this cadet received from his superior officers, and the lessons of leadership contained within.

The NPR reporter began listing those traits that mark an effective leader.  

As the list rolled on, I realized that the list of traits being described in a military setting was precisely the same list of traits that mark an effective teacher.


Because yes, teachers are leaders.  
Effective teachers  know how to lead as well as guide.

But....

what about effective leaders?

Perhaps, just perhaps...

the most effective leaders...

teach.

Effective leaders should know how to teach and guide.

Leaders such as the President of the United States.

I propose this for your thinking enjoyment:

Could it be that the most effective Presidents--leaders--the United States has had have also been teachers?

I'm not going to start listing names here, because that opens up an inevitable battle of opinion that I tend to shy away from.


Perhaps the mark of a great potential President is in his/her skills as an educator.

As we approach yet another Presidential election,  maybe one of the questions we should ask ourselves about the candidates is this:  What would this candidate teach me?  Teach us as a country?

If you wouldn't want a candidate as a teacher, chances are you won't want him/her as the leader of your country either.  

A pretty good litmus test if you ask me.

If you don't think you could stand being in a classroom for 8 hours with a candidate, what makes you think four years of this person as the leader of your country would be any better?

Food for thought my friends.

Between

Once upon a time there was a person who lived between.

Between now and then.

Between happy and sad.

Between full and empty.

Everyone accepted that this person was between.

“That person is perfectly between. So perfectly balanced.”

But this person did not feel balanced. 

In being neither here nor there, this person felt stuck.

“I feel stuck”  The person said.  “stuck in the middle.”

This person was the middle child of three.

This person had brownish middle-colored hair.

This person ate middleish foods—plain peanut butter sandwiches and scrambled eggs and buttered noodles.  And when this person ate, this person was both a little too full, but wanted to eat just a little bit more.  

 This person read books that  usually ended too soon, yet had storylines that went on too long.

This person got tired, so tired of between.

This person longed to feel furious about something.    Or to love something blindly and completely.  This person wanted to feel absolutely stuffed with food, or absolutely ravenous. 

Living in a world of self-imposed gray middleness, this person wanted vibrant color. 

One day this person opened the closet to reveal shirts and pants in every shade and design of gray.

The person sighed.

“Sigh.”  

The person turned around and went to the desk where the gray computer waited.

The person turned on the computer.  A flood of everything poured from the screen, and the person struggled against the tide of color and opinion and passion. 

Then the person, with held breath, typed in the word

LIFE

And hit return.

A thousand sounds came from the computer speakers—

Songs and voices

Bird chirps and elephant roars

The humming of engines and pounding of drums

And the whir of a million people walking and eating

And hugging and talking.

The person was overwhelmed and gobsmacked.

And so happy.

So happy.

The person added LIFE to the online shopping cart

And typed in the credit card number

Digit by painstaking digit

Because the person wanted to get it just right.

Then the person waited in the world of gray

Wearing the gray clothes and saying

Between words, eating between

Foods that were not quite satisfying.

In the fourth week of the promised three to five

LIFE arrived. 

The person looked at the box

And was terrified to open it.

What if it didn’t fit quite right?

What if it made the person dizzy?

What if the person had an allergic reaction to life 

And had to send it back?

The person got the scissors

And painstakingly snipped each piece of tape

That held the box of LIFE closed.

The person snipped the last piece of tape

And the box sprang open.

LIFE exploded everywhere.

LIFE spilled onto the floor and ran down the walls.

LIFE filled the cupboards and saturated the pillows.

The person was covered head to toe in

Brilliant, blinding, noisy, imperfect, delicious

LIFE.   

It was the most painful, wonderful feeling

That the person had ever experienced.

And when the person threw open the closet door

The clothes inside were sparkling rainbows of

Color and texture.

And when the person opened the cupboards and refrigerator,

a million conflicting flavors and scents poured into the

person’s mouth and nose.

The person staggered into living room and 

Fell back onto the sofa that sagged

Beneath so much LIFE.

The person’s eyes closed and dreams and fantasies

epiphanies and terrors assaulted the person’s mind

And imagination.

And it was wonderful.

WONDERFUL.

Wonderful Life.

A Mini-Rant in May: Education's Sweet Irony

The Merriam Webster Dictionary offers three definitions for the oft-misused word "irony".  The third definition reads:

" incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result"

Boom.  American education in a nutshell.

I was inspired to look up the word "ironic" after a dear friend, and incredibly talented and dedicated fellow teacher underwent the process of taking a state-required teaching test to prove that she is worthy of being a teacher.

This test involved the following hurdles:

1. The test was 7 hours long.
2. A retinal scan was required to enter the test.
3. To go to the bathroom test takers had to have their right hands scanned.
4. The test was entirely computerized, composed of 4 long essays and 200 critical thinking questions.
5. The testing site could only accommodate 14 test-takers at a time.

How ironic.

In order to become a teacher and stay a teacher, one must undergo the same grueling, dehumanizing, disconnected testing process that all good teachers try so hard to counterbalance when teaching.

Good teachers try to humanize; tests such as these dehumanize.

Good teachers strive to build critical thinking skills, empathy, a global perspective and broad knowledge to prepare their students for life.  Tests are a flat, emotionless peek at what a student knows at that discrete moment about a specific selection of subjects.

Good teachers know that real learning is complex, full of frustrations and self-doubt as well as joy and growing confidence.   For the majority of people, tests are all about frustration and self-doubt.

Good teachers know that achievement is more about the process of learning than the product.  Tests are entirely product-driven, reducing the complexities of learning into a number.

How ironic.

Testing companies, like any company, are profit-driven.

Their job is to make money.

They make money through testing fees, selling study materials, offering test-prep classes and tutoring.

They make money by convincing us that when all of our experiences, knowledge and work have been reduced down to a single number, we are somehow worth more.

This is a horrid reduction of everything education can and should be.
And it is a huge lie.

My dear friend knows this.
I know this.
We all know this.

How ironic it is then that this lie still holds so much power over us all.