Public Education in the 21st Century
By Martha Ball

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS ANNUAL COMMUNITY LUNCHEON
APRIL 15, 2010—SALT LAKE CITY MARRIOTT HOTEL

What kind of a nation, state, and community do we live in as we move into the 21st Century? Do you feel good about the legacy we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren? What are the things that unite us, and how are we getting this message across? What divides us? Do we talk about solutions to how we can learn to live together with our deepest differences—or do we choose to ignore them? These are the questions I choose to address today as I talk about the role of public education in the 21st Century.

Horace Mann, the father of American public education, said, “The schools should teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, but more importantly Civic Virtue.” Civic virtue is defined as the duty of the community to promote the common good as one of the major obligations of citizenship. The public schools provide the opportunity of bringing together students of different abilities and diverse backgrounds so they can learn to appreciate their differences and commonalities and discover how to live together in harmony with their deepest differences. This is the genius of the public schools. Are we achieving this today?

Let me back up by tracing my background in public education. I chose to become a history teacher because of the influence of several stellar teachers. My father, Lynn Hales, instilled in me a great love of this country. He was a public school educator for over 40 years and many of those years he spent teaching U.S. History and Civics. He made it clear to me that every generation has a special job to perform. His generation had fought to make the world safe for democracy and it would be my generation’s responsibility to see that democratic principles were expanded as we moved into a more pluralistic society. These topics were discussed daily around the dinner table.

I attended East High School in Salt Lake City. Then came the next great influence in the person of J. Hazel Witcomb. I took every course she taught: World History, U.S. History, and Civics. We outlined the Constitution of the United States and memorized parts of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Gettysburg address. History came alive in her classroom. She pushed us beyond what we thought we could achieve, always reminding us that someday our vote would be equal to hers—and that terrified her. Across the top of her blackboard was this quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” I had that quote at the top of the whiteboard in my classroom when I was a teacher.

As a freshman at the University of Utah I took a required course, American Government, from Professor J.D. Williams. He took the knowledge I had of government and showed how to put it into practical application. I learned about the importance of mass meetings and was encouraged to attend them. He taught the importance of involvement in political campaigns at the grass-roots level. He emphasized that democracy was messy but is at its best when the citizens are responsible for the rights of all. He taught the weaknesses as well as the strengths of our democratic system. He wanted his students to be realistic so that we would not lose faith in the system when difficult times would come. He often used this quote of Jefferson’s: “I prefer perilous liberty to quiet servitude.” I also used this quote in my classroom.

I had several experiences in my career that caused me to think about the questions I posed earlier. How can we live with our deepest differences? Upon graduation from college I participated in a foreign exchange program called the “Experiment in International Living” and spent the summer of 1961 in Communist Poland. The goal of this program was to help foster world peace by having dialogues with people of different cultures. Twelve Americans traveled to Poland that summer. We each lived with a Polish family that had a student who was our age. We had many group discussions with the Polish students. We traveled for three weeks around the countryside, and this was when we learned a lot about each other. A topic that came up on a regular basis was religion. Poland at that time was over 90% Catholic, yet all but one of these Polish students were Atheists. In their schools they had learned that “religion was the opium of the people.” Most of the Americans viewed themselves as being religious as they were involved with their churches and synagogues on a regular basis. We discovered that we had negative views about Atheism. One evening several of us had a discussion with some of the Polish students. We asked them, “Where do you get your values if you do not believe in religion?” In essence, this is what they said: “We do not need a religion to tell us how to behave. We have seen enough killing and torture. Therefore, we are determined that everyday we think about how we treat one another and try never to do harm to another human being.”

We as Americans felt shallow and superficial. We all attended church on a regular basis but none of us had internalized our beliefs at this age, thinking about our behavior on a daily basis. I thought about the negative views we had about Atheism and wondered why. It finally dawned on me that it was because we had not had the opportunity to associate with people with these views or, if we did, we had never engaged them in a discussion about their beliefs. As we traveled around Poland, I noticed that every time we came to a new city that all of the Polish students attended Mass. At the end of the trip I finally asked them, “You claim that you have no use for religion so why is it that you go to Mass each time we come to a new city?” They looked stunned that I had asked such a question. They said to me, “You don’t get it do you? We go to Mass because it is our peaceful way of fighting Communism. It drives the government crazy to see young people going to Mass.” This was my first introduction to a “Cultural Catholic.” This started a journey for me to learn more about other faiths and philosophies.

Teaching Dropouts

In 1964 I was hired to teach evening school four nights a week at Castlemont High School in Oakland, California. This school was 98% African-American. All the students in the class were dropouts and I was to teach them Civics, a class they had to take in order to get their high-school diploma. This turned out to be one of the most challenging teaching experiences I would have and one that had the greatest impact on me. There were 30 African-American men in the class, ranging in age from 18 to 30. I was 24. They all had Afros, as this was the era of “Black is Beautiful.” As I looked at the class that first night I was full of fear. My legs were shaking. I thought to myself how am I going to overcome these feelings? I did something that could be considered risky, but I felt it might help me. I said, “Gentlemen, your hair scares me, so I wondered if you would mind if I touched it.” One man in the front said, “Whatever turns you on.” I then touched their hair, and what an experience that was. I asked them how they got it to look that way. One of the men pulled out his comb. It looked to me more like a pitchfork than a comb. They then showed me how they used it. They asked if they could touch my hair. I said of course. The man who touched it said, “This is the wimpiest hair I have every touched, you poor dear.” This did break the barrier. Now the big challenge: How was I going to teach them about the Declaration of Independence which said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” How would they relate to that? Initially the Constitution said that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person. One of the men said jokingly to the others, “Brothers, let’s see, when it came to counting did they mean they would count two arms and one leg, or one head and one arm?” I knew the most important thing I had to do was LISTEN AND HAVE A MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE WITH THEM.

The most surprising thing that happened during these classes was that they would refer to their “dear sweet Jesus” during our discussions. They would often say, “You know Mrs. Ball what it says in the Good Book.” Some left me notes to read when I got home. They all were scriptures. As I got to thinking about these men I asked myself why I was initially afraid of them, and then surprised by their references to their dear sweet Jesus. In my family I was taught that you never denigrate a person’s race or their religion. Why then did I have these feelings? Once again, I realized that I had not had the opportunity to go to school with African-Americans and learn about their culture. It was obvious to me how much society had influenced my thinking, for these thoughts certainly did not come from my home.

Dealing with Discrimination

After living in California for 18 years I returned with my family to Utah. I had always taught high school but there were no jobs available, so I ended up teaching at a middle school in the Jordan School District. When I graduated from college, I said I would never teach kids this age, and yet I ended up teaching them for 18 years and enjoyed it. I know you are now probably questioning my sanity. I was assigned to teach Utah Studies. At one point, I said we would now learn about the Mormon migration west. I had no sooner said this when one of the students said, “You say the word ‘Mormon’ in class and my Dad will sue you.” Before I could respond, the boy next to him said, “If you don’t like it why don’t you move out? We founded the state.” Then in typical junior-high fashion, the class started chanting “move out, move out.” As I looked at their faces I knew that all of the students were hurting, but for different reasons, and I needed to do something. I asked my principal for advice on how to handle this and he said, “Do nothing. I want no lawsuits.” I then went to the Head of the Social Studies Department and asked him how he handled these kinds of issues when they came up in his classroom. He said, “I will give you some practical advice: keep your mouth shut for three years until you have tenure and then do what you want.” The simple fact was that everyone was afraid of a lawsuit if you even said the word “religion.” I started to look for classes and workshops that might help me address these issues.

In June of 1992 I enrolled in a one-week workshop entitled, “Rights, Responsibility and Respect: Education for Citizenship in a Diverse Society.” Dr. Charles Haynes, a national scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, DC was the teacher. He was also one of the main creators of the national 3Rs project. He talked about the history of public education and that we had gone through a period of two failed models. We started out as de facto Protestant schools where typically the day started out with a Christian prayer and students being taught to read using the King James version of the Bible. Struggles began to arise in the late 1800’s as many immigrants coming to the United States were Roman Catholic. The conflict started as the Catholics wanted their students to learn to read out of their Bible. Their concerns were not addressed but ignored. Violence against the Catholics broke out in the streets and Catholic convents were burned. The Catholics then developed their own parochial school system. So the problem of how we deal with religion in the public schools is not a new issue. The first failed model was called the “sacred public schools.”

Over time changes in society began to take place and greater emphasis was put on science in the curriculum and less and less on religion. It came to a head in the early 1960’s with two Supreme Court rulings about prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. The Supreme Court ruled that public school sponsored prayer and devotional Bible study were unconstitutional in the public schools. They went against the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This led to what many scholars called the “naked public schools.” This became a time when religion was sanitized and unwelcomed in the public schools. But no one paid attention to the part in the Supreme Court decision Abington v. Schempp that said, “We agree of course that the State may not establish a “religion of secularism” in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe’ In addition, it might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.” Teachers and administrators were afraid of lawsuits. This eventually became a second failed model. Scholars at the First Amendment Center believed that both models were unfair and unconstitutional. The problem today is that many of the people in the country still hold onto one of the failed models. One, that religion be promoted in the public schools (and usually their religion), and second, that there should be no discussion of religion. Because of these views Haynes and others came up with a third model—THE CIVIL PUBLIC SCHOOLS. They had the courage to think!

Return to the Fundamental Principles

They felt there was a need to return to the fundamental principles that guide our nation. What is the glue that holds us together? What does it mean to be an American? We are not related by bloodlines, we are not the same race, religion, gender, culture or economic status but we do agree to live according to a set of principles found in the Constitution of the United States, The Bill of Rights, and The Declaration of Independence. The only place in the Constitution where there is a reference to religion is in Article 6 which states “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Let’s look at the principles we agreed to live by as found in the Preamble to the United States Constitution. “We the people of the United States (note it does not say ‘we the government’) in order to form a more perfect union (meaning there would always be room to improve) establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” These are some of the values that bind us together—the glue. Let us look at the phrase “promote the general welfare.” This means we set aside our own private interests for the common good of the community—what we refer to as civic virtue. The Founding Fathers believed that this was a major obligation of citizenship. George Washington was a great example of putting the general welfare above his interests. He was so popular after leading the troops to victory in the Revolutionary War that many wanted him to be crowned king. Instead, he returned to private life. Students need to understand these principles. They also need to be taught that we have not always applied them fairly to all Americans and why that happened. Let us look at several of these.

To be able to vote in 1791 you had to be white, male, and a property owner. African-Americans did not get the right to vote until 1870 with the passage of the 15th Amendment. In 1964, almost one-hundred years later, with the passage of the 24th Amendment the poll tax was finally eliminated. In 1920 the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The Indians—who were here first—were the last to be made citizens and in 1924 could finally vote.

Elie Wiesel, a survivor of a World War II concentration camp, said, “There is never enough justice; each generation needs to create more justice.” To do this our students need to be well educated. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech on April 4, 1968, the day before he was assassinated which said: “In 1960, when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters … I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

The 3Rs

The 3Rs (Rights, Responsibility, Respect) came about as a result of these discussions and concerns over how divisive our nation was becoming over religious issues. These are the principles to be taught to teachers and students in our public schools based on the first 16 words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” How do we teach these principles to our students?

1. RIGHTS: This means that religious liberty, or freedom of conscience, is a precious, fundamental, and inalienable right for all people living in this nation.

2. RESPONSIBILITY: The golden rule for civic responsibility is that rights are best guarded and responsibilities best exercised when each person guards for all others those rights they guard for themselves. This is critical because of the increase of pluralism in our schools. Our community is changing daily. One of our middle schools in Salt Lake City has 27 different nations represented and 21 different languages spoken in the home. What a challenge this is for our public schools. We do not turn any child away. Where in the world would we find this duplicated?

3. RESPECT: This means that students must understand that civil debate, the cornerstone of a true democracy, is vital to the success of any effort to improve and reform our public schools. Personal attacks, name-calling, ridicule, and similar tactics destroy the fabric of our society and undermine the educational mission of our schools. Even when our differences are deep, all students engaged in disputes should learn how to treat one another with CIVILITY and RESPECT. They should strive to be accurate and fair. Through constructive dialogue the students have much to learn from one another. These 3Rs are our “Articles of Peace” which can bind us together across our differences in the 21st Century. This goes for all of us as we work in our community. The HOW we debate can be more critical than WHAT we debate. Remember, we will always be a minority somewhere.

The Story of Roger Williams

Students need to know the story of Roger Williams. In 1631, at the age of 27, Roger Williams left England because of religious persecution. He was a Puritan. He came to Massachusetts Bay Colony where his friend, John Winthrop, had arrived the previous year. Winthrop was governor of the colony. Williams began to ask questions that got him in trouble with the leaders of the Puritan colony. He wanted know if they had purchased the land from the Indians, or had they signed a treaty with them. He declared that the colony’s charter granted by King Charles I was invalid as the land belonged to the Indians and it must be obtained in a fair manner. Roger Williams had the courage to think “out of the box” as we would say today. As you can well imagine, he became a great friend of the Indians. He observed them closely and established a rapport with them that no other colonist had been able to achieve. Williams said that the Indians were more courteous and civil in their dealings with each other, even with strangers, than the English. In one of his writings he said, “To have dominant cultures or powerful nations determine the religion of powerless people is to learn absolutely nothing from history. Forced conversion was no conversion at all.” I will paraphrase one of my favorite quotes of Williams: “On a good day religious coercion brings hypocrisy and on a bad day rivers of blood.” All we have to do is look around the world today and see how true this is. He soon began preaching “soul liberty” or freedom of conscience. He claimed that all men were born with this inalienable right (this was long before Jefferson) to be able to choose to believe or not believe. This is even more amazing because these radical ideas were coming from a deeply religious man. He proclaimed that Massachusetts Bay Colony was a failure because it did not protect liberty of conscience for all. He argued that true religious liberty, what he called “soul liberty,” is only possible when the state does not control religion or enforce religious conformity and when the state protects the right of every citizen to follow the dictates of conscience in matters of faith. You can see how this eventually led to his banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In October of 1635 he was told he had to leave and they would give him some time to get his things in order. During this time he was asked to say nothing about his views until he left. Williams was living in Salem when word got back to the government leaders in Boston that he was still expressing his views. In January of 1636 the town council met and decided that he must be sent back to England because his views and speeches were too detrimental to the growth of the colony. They planned to kidnap him and put him on a ship that was ready to depart for England. Surprisingly his friend, John Winthrop, who was on the council, sent a messenger to let Williams know of the plan to capture him and told him to leave immediately. Winthrop had a genuine respect for Williams and knew if he were sent back to England that his life would be in danger. Can you imagine that happening today with politicians of opposing views? For 14 weeks Williams wandered—many times in a blinding snowstorm. He was finally found by the Indians. Because of his fair treatment of the Indians they assisted him and helped him recover. He asked the Indians what land he might have and obtained an agreement with the Narragansett Indians. He paid for the land and he never broke the agreement with the Indians. To this day Rhode Island is the only colony and state that did not break their treaty with Indians. The establishment of the colony Rhode Island would mark the first time in the history of mankind that two very radical ideas were implanted. The concept of no establishment of a religion by government, and free exercise—or, in William’s words, liberty of conscience. Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and nonbelievers were welcomed to his colony. Soon after founding the colony, Williams wrote Winthrop who was the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and asked, “How does one run a colony?” Winthrop gave him advice and the two men maintained a friendship for many years thereafter. Clergymen in the other colonies referred to Rhode Island as the “sewer of New England.”

Roger Williams enjoyed debating religious issues with all people who came to the colony. He tried to convince them of his truth and when he finished and they didn’t agree, he shook hands with them and said, “You have the right to be wrong.” He did not accept or like the views of many who were given refuge in the colony he founded. In fact, he deeply opposed the Catholics, Quakers, and others, viewing their ideas as contrary to the Gospel. He worked tirelessly to persuade them to the truth as he understood it. But at the same time, he worked equally as hard to protect their right to follow the truth as they understood it in their own conscience. William’s message has even greater importance to us today as we deal with the religious diversity in our nation. What an example for us to use today, and our students need to be well versed about Roger Williams.

I will give you an example of how teaching the 3Rs and learning about Roger Williams influenced one of my 8th grade U.S. History classes. We were having a discussion about religion and how it was practiced in Rhode Island. Suddenly, two of my students were in a debate over who belonged to the true church. One was Catholic and the other Mormon. One of the boys raised his hand and asked, “Mrs. Ball, will you tell us which one is the true church?” I said to them, “What would Roger Williams say, and we will stay in class until you figure it out.” It was a long minute and then one of the boys said, “Roger Williams would say if you want to believe that yours is the only true church then I have to let my buddy believe that his is the only true church as well.” At the end of class the two boys went out together, laughing and talking. Students want fairness. When they are taught correct principles, they will meet the challenges of the 21st Century. I have great faith in them. I believe this is the genius of the public schools. It is the last public institution that brings all our diversities together. It is a place where we can learn to live with our deepest differences.

A Haven for the Cause of Conscience

In conclusion, I would like to tell you one last story about Rhode Island. In 1658 a boatload of Jewish families landed in Newport, Rhode Island. They were told for the first time in many centuries that they were welcome and free to practice their faith openly, and free to be full citizens of the colony. They could buy land on which to build a synagogue. Can you imagine their amazement when they were told that the government would not, indeed could not interfere with the practice of their religion? Can’t you imagine them saying, “Did you hear us correctly? We are Jews.” Now picture the smile on the faces of the officials as they said “That’s right, and our colony is a haven for the cause of conscience.” A few years later the Touro Synagogue was built. The first one in this country. They built a secret trapdoor near the pulpit leading to an escape tunnel. What a tribute to the United States and to Roger Williams’ convictions for the Jews of Rhode Island never had to use that trapdoor.
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Williams’ message has even greater importance to us today as we deal with the religious diversity in our nation. He dared to think and have the courage and passion to stay true to his convictions. We must appreciate the richness of this diversity today and not let it pull us apart.

Have we become a nation that likes to take offense and sue instead of trying to work together to solve problems? Are we afraid to learn the art of compromise? Surely, we can disagree without disparaging others or impugning their motives. However, is this not what is happening in our nation today? Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Again I ask the question, what kind of a nation are we as we begin the 21st Century? What legacy are we giving our children and grandchildren? What are the habits of our hearts? Emerson said “One thing of value is an active soul.” Are we going to remain the silent majority? I challenge all of us to become active, passionate advocates of civic virtue. The schools must teach it, and we all need to practice it. Let us combat a culture of self-righteousness, self-indulgence, and polarization. We not only can but must relearn the art of compromise and civil dialogue. These must be the habits of our hearts. These are the things we must teach our students and children. If we do this then we can be certain, as Lincoln was when he said the following at Gettysburg, that “GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, SHALL NOT PERISH FROM