The Common Bus

In American society, there are few commonly shared institutions. Places where people of different beliefs learn to interact, communicate, and disagree in a civil manner. Learning to disagree fairly and constructively is perhaps the hardest lesson of all. I know that I am still learning how to do so.

The public schools used to function in this role. These days the public school is one of the primary battlegrounds; education in general has become idealogical warfare. With the start of school, it is useful to reflect on the state of affairs.  There is no longer a common bus where we all ride to a civil society.

As with most conflicts, it is easy to paint opponents in a negative light and present one perspective as right and the other perspective of wrong. This is fundamentally questionable. Very little in life is a simple as this, particularly complicated issues such as public education. There is a lot right with public education, there are things wrong. I have been greatly bummed by arguments where isolated cases are extrapolated into general stereotypes; outliers as proof of maxims.

Both Liberals and Conservatives are guilty of this simplification. For example, arguing that most schools struggle with the same issues as large inner city schools is fundamentally dishonest.  But, it is a common strategy of the Right with no disclaimers that the examples are extreme and not normative. On the other side of the spectrum, the Left likewise characterizes legitimate concerns that parents raise about the underlying ethics in curriculum as Nazi-like. Trotting out censorship histories in totalitarian  regimes as equivalent to a parent expressing concerns about the reading books that they deem too much too soon for their kids to read.

There seems to be an inability in our slice of society to own up for our own lack of coming clean. Confession of faults used to be a Christian virtue, now it is legal suicide and a PR disaster. A political culture polarizes the grounds and creates extreme opposition. Any conciliatory gesture is assassinated in the media and pounced on by the wolves of every stripe; red meat for the hungry self-justifying.

A little humility goes a long way. In fact, humility is a path to the Kingdom of Heaven. We bring Heaven to earth when we practice the qualities of Christ. Forgive us Lord, for we have sinned.