As a former high school history and literature teacher, I guided my students through the U.S. Constitution, discussing the intentions of the founders in breaking away from a monarchy and forming a new nation founded on the rule of law. When we examined the threats to this fragile experiment, imperfect as it was, the conflicts that led to the Civil War seemed far away, as the idealism of the students was inspired by the events of the Civil Rights movement. Progress was on its way. In the years since I stopped teaching, other major steps have been taken in helping to move American citizenry into a freer and more equitable way to overcome the flaws inherent in the founding of the nation. Setbacks such as the Vietnam War had disillusioned my young students. But, always, there were possibilities of hope and reconciliation. I am not in the classroom anymore, but I stay up to date with the news and am in touch with teenagers who are trying to integrate the past, present and future as they move into adulthood. But times have changed.
My generation had to deal with confronting evil as it was expressed during World War II and the Holocaust. This generation has to confront not only evil but also untruth. We see it everywhere. What to believe on social media? Whom to trust? It is easy to be cynical and ignore the world and only care about our personal needs. But that is not why I became a teacher, and it is not why other teachers have chosen to teach at this time in history.
The events of June and July have been stressful and debilitating. How does one respond to a litany of lies, political violence and vitriol coming fast one after another? What to understand when lies and hate sit like undigested food, not corrected, so that we can find our way to truth?
Although change comes slowly in a democracy, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Those are beautiful words to quote, but they need to be a beacon towards responsible action.
As Congresswoman Shantel Brown said in 2022, “Like many of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous quotations, these words echo through the ages. They offer hope and give rise to a sense that progress toward freedom, equality, and – indeed – justice is inevitable. But the arc of the moral universe is anything but. It does not bend towards justice on its own – no, it only does so because people pull it towards justice. It is an active exercise, not a passive one.”
In my day, we often read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It helped students grapple with the effects of being drugged to avoid reality. Today, I would teach 1984 where George Orwell describes the effects of Big Brother and the effect of propaganda to create untruths. Although it was written to unmask Soviet and Chinese communist attitudes, it is even more relevant today.
In her book The Death of Truth journalist Michiko Kakutani connects some of the dots about the assault on truth and relates them to the broader social and political dynamics that have been present in American culture, challenging democracy and the rule of law.
At the suggestion of my son George, I recently read Stefan Zweig’s book The World of Yesterday. While Zweig’s biographical account of the early days of Nazism in Vienna could be taken mainly as a historical window, another message became even more timely. He said, “And because they were reluctant to abandon their accustomed lives, their daily routines and habits, people did not want to believe how rapidly their freedoms were being stolen.”
High school students today are very familiar with the truths and untruths that circulate on social media, and how fake news and conspiracy theories clutter the mind as people are trying to figure out what really happened. It seems to me that we can help them best by teaching them how to think, understand and listen to different points of view, and how to discuss without demonizing their opponent and see through the clouds of words that seek to confuse. As George Orwell wrote, “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language.” English teachers know how language has been dumbed down, how much resistance there is to reading an entire book instead of excerpts, and how easy it is to have AI write their essays.
Some would state that there is no such thing as truth. Granted, we have to penetrate history to recognize that up to recently, history was written by the winners, and teachers today are making a strong case for describing history from different aspects to gain a fuller picture. There are no simple good guys and bad guys. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t truth. Once we say there is no objective truth, then the next step is to say each of us has our own truth and that opinions are more important than knowledge and feelings are more important than facts. It may be uncomfortable, but we have to step out of our bubbles to examine the various aspects.
I think Christiane Amanpour’s words when she wrote about media coverage during the 2016 presidential race can be helpful to teachers.
“Like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate. It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth. We cannot continue the old paradigm – like over global warming where 99.9 percent of the empirical scientific evidence is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers. I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences. I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.”
When the Supreme Court made its historic decision in Trump v. United States on July 1, 2024, I felt as if as citizens we were listening to “Newspeak” where the same words can have different meanings. Official acts, unofficial acts. It’s all a matter of how a judge defines “official.”
The goal of a high school teacher is to help students understand different sides of a situation and come to their own conclusions. Yet, it is difficult to accept corruption, lies and violence as part of a legitimate approach to weighing two sides. As we live through the next months, I hold high school teachers in my heart. Their task is not easy.