I've decided to retire from teaching after 33 years which means, among other things, I'll LOSE the platform I've used over the last 16 years to deliver commentaries on Michigan Public.
I'd like to thank Michigan Public and its listeners for the opportunity to offer the classroom teacher point of view about policy and larger developments in the field of education. It's not a perspective included enough in the media, though I'm grateful Michigan Public has bucked that trend in many ways.
I don't presume to know more than anyone else about education and the public schools, but I have been TEACHING for a long time and I have two especially important observations to offer before I fade away.
First, we need to value our public schools - more than ever. I don’t feel hostility towards homeschooling or private schools. Different children have different needs and there are many paths in education. But the fact is that 90% of the children in America attend public schools.
It's simply where education happens for the vast majority of children in this country.
Horace Mann, who is often considered the father of public education and did his most important work in the middle of the 19th century, called the public schools the balance wheel of the Republic.
In his time, he was referring to the melting pot the United States was becoming through immigration and how public schools could help unify the country through the dissemination of American identity and values.
That remains, as ever, an essential function. We are a nation of immigrants. It's worth reminding ourselves of that during this time of anti-immigration hysteria.
Much of public life that used to give us literal common ground is gone or receding: the town square, the mall, attendance at church, or a host of other institutions that used to connect us have dwindled as we spend more time on our phones, streaming movies at home, and being social at a distance.
TODAY, the public schools are also one of the few places that bring us together. And not just our children, but whole communities - at school plays and concerts, athletic events, school board meetings, and the like.
I won't get into the decreasing funding of public schools over the last few decades or the charter school controversy now, but please pay attention folks.
We simplycan't afford to lose our public schools.
Second, my role for over three decades in that arena has been as a civic educator, more commonly known as a social studies teacher. Our main function is to help students become better people and citizens.
As I survey the uncivil discourse we suffer, political polarization, and events like the Insurrection of January 6th 2021, it saddens me to conclude at the end of my career that we have failed to foster the same respectful discourse we demand in our classrooms in the nation as a whole.
Of course, much of that is due to larger forces beyond our control: the mean spiritedness of social media, an often dysfunctional government not responding to peoples’ needs, and a shrinking middle class are all beyond our culpability.
I tell my students that I figured out early in my teaching career I was a gardener, planting the seeds of ideas they may not care about now, as a teenager, but I know they will one day as adults.
I also understand that people expected the public schools to solve nearly all societal problems literally from the moment they were created. However, after my long career, I see with great clarity that schools cannot be the primary driver of preserving the historic norms and mores of democracy.
We have an important role to play, no doubt, and can both deepen and inform good citizenship in our students.But our nation’s core democratic values, like all values, start in the home.
Please talk to your children about, not just our constitutional rights, but our civic duties.Teach them about civil discourse and respecting, and even attempting to learn from, people who feel differently, or come from different backgrounds. Explain that a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” in Lincoln's famous phrase requires hard work and diligence from the people.
I’ll be watching from the sidelines now, filled with both hope and some anxiety.
Editor’s note: Keith Kindred is a social studies teacher at South Lyon East High School. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Public, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.
