Last week I researched my blog topic, the role of the Congress in counting the electoral votes, a pro forma process; I reread the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and posted the blog.
“Will Republican Senators and House Member ‘Objections’ Prevent the Election of Biden/Harris? Why January 6th Will Be an ‘Interesting’ Day,” (Read here)
Little did I know …..
Wednesday morning, as usual, I donned my dri-fit winter biking clothes pedaled around the almost deserted roads; awaiting my steaming black coffee; and turned on MSNBC. The media announced the Ossoff-Perdue race – the democrats won both Georgia seats and will control the Senate – barely. Senator Schumer will be the majority leader and control the Senate calendar and the bills that come to the floor. I pumped my fist, “Yes.”
The combined meeting of Congress gathered and I settled in to watch the constitutional process, it looked like a long day with thirteen Republican senators and over 130 Houses members “objecting.”
The insurrection exploded.
Watching a momentous moment in history from your easy chair is strange, welcome to the 21st century.
I had just finished reading Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy: The Lure of Authoritarianism (July, 2020), a book that presaged the events of the day.
It was deep in the night, 3 AM or so, that I exhaled, Biden had 270 electoral votes, he was formally elected.
Teachers across the nation woke up wondering, how do I teach the “insurrection” lesson?
Will they understand the word insurrection? [“…a violent uprising against an authority or government”], Or coup [“…a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government“], how about “sedition?”
Lesson plans and guides popped up on the web. A teacher described, in detail, his Thursday lesson, PBS posted a lesson plan, and Generation Citizen a superb teacher research guide here.
For me, the question is: how do we excite/engage/ teenagers? A twelve year old middle school-er, a fifteen year old high school student? How does a White teacher engage students of color in a conversation about race? Do references to “White Privilege “discomfort” you? Do you laugh at Dave Chappelle (Watch here) or, does he make you feel queasy?
For students (or adults), especially of color, the insurrection racial disparities are striking …. perhaps ask students to read below and comment.
“The violent breaching of the halls of power on Capitol Hill by the insurrectionist mob on Wednesday, which left one woman dead of a police gunshot wound, represents one of the plainest displays of a racial double standard in both modern and recent history.”
“When Black people protest for our lives, we are all too often met by National Guard troops or police equipped with assault rifles, shields, ‘itear gas and battle helmets,” the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation said in a statement.
“When white people attempt a coup, they are met by an underwhelming number of law enforcement personnel who act powerless to intervene, going so far as to pose for selfies with terrorists,”
Every February, in my role as President of the Education Alumni at CCNY, I sponsor a Principal/Community Breakfast, a meeting with an education policy maker or a researcher, and this year a member of the Bureau of Census who made an excellent presentation: “The Census and Schools.” I also invited the leadership class from a local high school. At the end of the presentation I chatted with the high school kids, I asked how the possible loss of one or to seats in Congress might impact their lives; one kid had that look, ”why are you bothering me with this nonsense.”
Student: “Congress is a bunch of old white guys; they don’t care about us.”
Me: “Why don’t you run for office?”
Student: That, you must be crazy look.
Me: “If you’re eighteen you can run for a County Committee member, all you need is 25 signatures from registered democrats and the only people who vote are people living in blocks around your house.”
She looked interested, the others kids urged her to run, I sent a link to a candidate info site to her teacher – a month later COVID hit.
Maybe she is the Black AOC.
A lesson or a few lessons will not impact the way students think or act. We cannot bemoan the changing world in which we live and yearn for the past; we have to change with a changing world. We have to enter the world of teenagers, and teenagers of color.
Anne Appelbaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning author writes,
“Our new communications revolution has been far more rapid than anything we know from the fifteenth century or even the twentieth. After the printing press was invented, it took many centuries for Europeans to become literate …”
Communications has become democratized (Facebook, Twitter, Substack), you can chose your news, or, create your own news. Journalism is morphing, is changing from day-to-day.
In many advanced democracies there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative. People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts. False, partisan and often misleading narratives now spread in digital wildfires, cascades of falsehoods that move too fast for fact checkers to keep up … people click on the news they want to hear.
A generation of young people now treat elections as an opportunity to show their disdain for democracy by voting for people who don’t even pretend to have political views.”
Will a few lessons on “the insurrection” make us feel better, how can we engage and impact our students?
Appelbaum concludes.
Western constitutional democracies always acknowledged the possibility of failure … we always knew, or should have known that history can once again reach into our private lives and rearrange them. We always knew, or should have known that alternative visions of our nations would try and draw us in. But maybe, picking our way through the darkness we can find that together we can resist them.
We may be the last guardians at the gates, hopefully, preparing a generation of democracy warriors.
Let’s go out listening to Woody Guthrie, “The Times They Are ‘A Changing.”
Ed In The Apple 