The classroom: Young witnesses to America’s undoing

I have taught U.S. history for the past decade and over these years have never felt that I was both teaching and living history so much as I have over the past two months.

As I and my students experience the executive orders crippling the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing refugee migration to our shores, the President’s telegraphing of submission to Russia, and the suggestion of a cultural genocide in Palestine, I posited the above question to my students in 10th grade U.S. History and Literature.

I did so with genuine curiosity of the teenage generation’s thought on what America is, what it should be and what it could be. As one approaching middle age, am I too entrenched in decades of American hegemony and an idealized version of the United States as a potential force for good, or at least a balancing force against real danger around the world to understand the radical shifts of the moment? Or am I just old enough to be rightfully worried about the promised foreign agenda?

Prior to the students moving about to discuss, create mind-maps and word clouds, we reviewed the content we had studied up until that point which included the first contact of European settlers with indigenous people, the forced migration of Africans through the Middle Passage, the hopes of founders such as William Penn to create settlements where immigrants of all religions were welcome, and the first moments of rebellion against the British crown by the patriots in Massachusetts. Students had also had the opportunity, on the occasion of the inauguration of a new president, to read the first inaugural address by President Lincoln, as well as President Kennedy’s address. They also watched the address given by President Trump in the Rotunda of the Capitol.

This is all to say they were not coming to this question from an uneducated place. Further, the students that sit around the table in my classroom hail from all corners of Connecticut, countless states within our country and many nations abroad.

As I walked around the classroom and the hallways where they had situated themselves, I acted as a silent observer to the conversation. I was immediately struck by some of the points they were making. These young learners shared thoughts that included, “should be an escape for freedom,” “spreading ideas of equality,” “a military and technological leader” and “biggest economy-helping those with less develop.”

They asked high level questions of each other to come to these conclusions and were thoughtful about the supposed dichotomy of helping domestically versus helping abroad.

It was clear from the conversation that these 15- and 16-year-old students, from all around the world, understand what this administration does not; a positive presence on the world stage doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us stronger.

I taught some of these same students last year when we investigated WWI and WWII. They understand that isolationism didn’t work then, and it won’t work now in an even more globalized world.

A nation that keeps its promise to Afghans who worked alongside our men and women in uniform, a nation that provides low cost, but lifesaving aid to children in developing countries, a nation that assists in demining farm land of weapons that were left behind by our wars of the 70s, a nation that stands up to dictators and autocrats and a nation that supports the oppressed and marginalized at home and abroad is a safer nation, a better nation and a greater nation.

As my students so correctly identified, America’s role in the world is a beacon of hope; this is what makes America great!

Let us as the adults in our community stand up to enact what these young people know to be true. While it is undoubtably healthy to re-examine funding commitments and alliances from time to time, let us not break down all good will on the global stage.

As my students read Kennedy’s inaugural address they noted his appeal to a new generation. Though his speech from 64 years ago spoke to a time when even their parents were not born, they resonated with his words, most especially, “…a new generation of Americans…. unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed…”.

This new generation is witnessing an undoing, and they are committed to standing against it.

Jennifer Dillon of Ashford has been an educator at independent schools for the past 10 years.