Monthly News Headlines: "After murdering his wife and mother in their homes, a former alter-boy and Eagle Scout perched atop a 27-story tower at the University of Texas, and killed 14 people, wounding 32 others. In Chicago, 4,000 National Guardsmen were called in to deal with shootings between police and Negro snipers. In Cleveland, a young Black mother was killed by police, triggering a series of riots." Sound familiar? No this wasn't just on the news... it was the summer of 1966.
What We Teach, and Don't Teach
In the often repeated words of poet/philosopher George Santayana (along with Edmund Burke, Sara Shepard, Lemony Snicket and Jesse Ventura, among others), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But in an effort to bolster grades in math and science, our under-supported school systems have produced at least three generations of 'history ignorant' students. In a recent essay, Professor Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame writes, "Our students' ignorance is not a failing of the educational system - it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts -- whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about -- have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West."
Furthermore, the little history that is being taught may be more damaging than not teaching anything at all. In a 2012 Huffington Post blog, teacher Nicholas Ferroni laments, "Our text books do not blatantly encourage students to be racist, sexist or discriminatory, but it's the lack of figures and truths which give students the impression that certain groups didn't nearly have as large a role as others and, in some cases, groups are completely nonexistent. When broken down statistically, our textbook mentions eight white males for every one African American, women, Jew, and one figure from other various minority groups." Later in the piece he continues, "By omitting various minority groups from our textbooks, we are giving the impression that these groups not only didn't contribute anything to our current America, but that they literally didn't exist. By teaching all students about gay (which has roots much deeper than current events), Muslim, Asian and Latino history in America, we will NOT 'make' students gay, Muslim, or even Latino; we will make them tolerant and understanding."
Cuts to The Arts- Un-funding Understanding
As our screwed up national priorities continue to pour billions into a bloated outdated military budget at the expense of public education, the first casualty has been The Arts... the one area of education that most promotes racial diversity, empathy and understanding. In junior high school, in the years before Negroes became 'Black,' I remember the one place I found acceptance was with the 'colored kids' that used to hang out after school and sing a-cappella in the hallway. They didn't care about my height or the color of my socks or how much money my father made, they just liked the way I sang. After the bells and bustle and buses had gone, the fresh buffed floors echoed 'In The Still Of The Night' against the stairwell and the music was magic and made total strangers feel like friends.
And whether it was black and whites holding hands singing 'We Shall Overcome,' the poetry of Rap, or spray-canned graffiti on subway walls; music and art have historically given voice to, and provided pressure release from bubbling frustration, anger, and resentment that might otherwise explode into violence. By removing or reducing the possibilities for this type of multi-cultural interaction in our schools, with no more art or music or even recess in some cases, some of today's alienation, mistrust and misunderstanding, is depressingly predictable.
The TV Façade
Although today's generation gets most of its news, entertainment and political opinions from like-minded communities on their mobile devices (a problem in itself), the rest of us grew up with television. But TV has also evolved from a few basic networks, now with fake smiling multi-racial commercials and sanitized, ratings-based news and programming, to literally hundreds of narrow cast stations catering to special interests, separate racial and ethnic backgrounds. And like our kids, we tend to watch programming that reinforces our particular beliefs, interests and opinions. The only somewhat 'neutral' news we receive is from public television, its budget dramatically cut, and relying on contributions, its coverage primarily appealing to literate well educated donors. This leaves a massive, unrepresented poor population with no on-air visibility and the mistaken impression that things are gradually getting better, when for a majority of the unseen, uneducated, and unemployed, it isn't.
A Partial Answer?
Obviously, today's increased racial tension and violence is not just the result of a broken educational system and bad TV. But with the recent political campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, taking professional pollsters, political hacks, jaded news reporters, and the rest of us totally by surprise, a veil of complacency has been pulled off to reveal the country's hidden underbelly of pervasive poverty and distrust. This new 'silent majority' we didn't read about in school or see on TV is now finding their voice and yelling "We're mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!"... Could this mean a change is coming?... We'll see.
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