which is the longest I have ever gone silent here since joining this site during the 2004 cycle in December, 2003.
Given how visible I have been here, I thought I owed the community some explanation for my silence.
Let me start by noting that I have not lost interest in politics nor in what gets posted here. I still read regularly, even if I have rarely even commented. I will share things I encounter here on Facebook and Twitter.
I am 73, and can note the decrease in energy over the past few years. That is certainly a contributing factor.
So is the schedule I have been leading, which between teaching 6 classes of seniors and helping coach freshman soccer players has meant that on a normal school day I leave home at 6 AM and do not return until sometime between 6:3-7:00 PM, and then still have some school related tasks to do. I also then have household tasks as well — shopping, doing laundry, paying bills, etc. I perhaps can manage to listen to Rachel Maddow and a bit of Laurence O’Donnell before I crash and go to sleep, getting up by 5 AM.
Soccer season will come to a close in a few weeks, and then I will leave school for home by 3:30, and will be home at least 2 hours earlier than is my current pattern.
But there is more to it than just time and energy, I have found myself wanted to reflect more deeply before I would opine publicly, in part because I have to consider carefully how I will approach topics with my students.
So let me explore and share some of this below.
As many here probably know, this year I began (yet again) a new teaching position. This year I am teaching 6 of the 8 sections of government to the senior class at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville MD. Two of those are honors classes, with 28 and 30 students respectively, the other four are a combination of government and of practical law, and are smaller, around 21 each. The two classes others teach are one section of AP Government and another honors class, so effectively I teach about 2/3 of the senior class. I have most of the leadership of the student government in my honors classes, and they meet in my room during the 40 minutes of “Interim” (a time without regular classes, a break for most students, although some are making up work and others are squeezing in rehearsals for our outstanding musical programs) — they are usually there at least once in an 8 day cycle. I also have some of our outstanding athletes, from football players who already have their D-1 scholarships to soccer players one of whom may leave us and join a European team on his 18th birthday to a 7’2” basketball player who is being heavily recruited by schools like Michigan, Notre Dame (whose coach is a graduate of DeMatha), and Florida State, to a baseball player who missed the first two weeks of school because he was at the world championships in Asia and who may have decide between a D-1 scholarship which he has already been offered and taking a major signing bonus from a major league team. Some of these are also outstanding students, and I am honored to gotten to know them better.
Of greater importance, I am honored to be part of the DeMatha family — and the school is very much a family, as my wife discovered a week ago tonight, when she joined me in helping chaperone the homecoming dance, at which the majority of attendees were seniors, and thus many of my students, although even some of the freshman either from my study hall (I have that duty as well as my 6 classes) and my soccer team also attended. My wife met many of my students, as well as other members of the faculty and staff and the significant others of those adults where relevant. When I introduced her to our President, Father James, who is a member of the Trinitarian Order that established the school, he gave her a big hug and told how much they loved having me at DeMatha, which of course also provided me with some warmth.
My wife commented to me on the way home at how much mutual respect there was between the students and the faculty/staff, and I responded that the school could not operate without it. After my last two years in dysfunctional public schools with major discipline problems, she wondered why the kind of environment I now have could not exist in public schools. In fact it can, and I certainly had much of it in my 13 years at nearby Eleanor Roosevelt High School, which also had outstanding athletics and music/arts programs. It requires a certain kind of commitment, one which may be easier to do in a non-public setting, and is certainly somewhat easier to achieve in a setting where there is a mission that is clearly stated and to which students applying and their families agree in the process of applying,
I can see how it makes a difference. This past week we had a number of 8th grade students shadowing some of our freshman (and we will have more next week). I can see how the shadows are reacting, and our admissions staff shared the reactions of some of the potential students and their families: they are clearly impressed by what they experience. And note — they are experiencing what it might be like to be a student at DeMatha through the eyes and the daily schedules of students only a year older than they are, students who themselves are relatively new to our family.
I am reminded of my first meeting with Father James, when I came in to sign my contract. The first words he said after greeting me was to ask me if I felt sufficiently welcome to the DeMatha family. That made an impression.
I know the husband of my wife’s sister, a retired FBI agent who was at Ground Zero in NYC on September 11 and ofr months thereafter, was quite impressed when he spent time with four of my 6 classes.
Perhaps I can explain it in some simple ways. I mentioned that students have an ‘interim” which provides one break during the span of 6 academic periods and a lunch during the school day. Adolescents do need some down time, although we are trying a new schedule this year (classes meet on a rotating basis through the day, 6 times in 8 days — that can be a bit confusing for both students and teachers). Many of the seniors have a free period, and that can give them some additional down time, or time to make up tests they might have missed because of athletics, music, college visits, or simple illness,
By and large I do not write passes. If one of my seniors wants to use the restroom or get some water, I simply let them go, knowing they will not wander. I have a few who do classwork on computers/tablets because of mechanical/handwriting issues, and I can simply let them go to the library to print out their work. About the only “pass” I write is to list the names of my study hall freshman who want to use that time in either the Academic Support Center or the Library, ona post-it with the date and time so it is clear they had permission to leave study hall.
Clearly much of my time and energy is going into what I do with my job. That is part of why I have been absent here. But it is only part of it.
We are again in a primary cycle. This is the fourth competitive cycle I have been through here, starting with 2004, then 2008, and then 2016. Those previous experiences made me somewhat reluctant to engage again in what at times has been an environment full of vitriol. Also, I did not early on have strong leanings towards any candidate (although I had excluded some from my support in the primary). I am pretty close to making a commitment, and may return to address that in the near future — and no, I am not going to give even the slightest hint of how I am leaning in this posting. I really did not want to get involved in the kind of back and forth I had experienced three times before since joining this site.
There also is the mess that comes from the current administration. I do have some strong feelings about many aspects of what we are experiencing. But I really did not think I had any unique insights to offer. And as new people have become active here, much of what I used to do is no longer needed from me. Going way back, before the abbreviated pundit round-ups I used to offer commentary on various op-eds I encountered. Even after APR started, often I would write about a column from Blow or Krugman or Robinson or others well before others encountered them. Now many others do that=, having recognized that columns are usually available online the afternoon or evening before they appear in print.
Similarly with breaking news stories, and not just from the major New York and Washington papers. I also used to bring attention to longer pieces in publications like Atlantic or New Yorker, and/or focus on work of people others might not otherwise encounter — in the past that included Roger Cohen, Derrick Jackson, Andrew Bacevich, and going way back Eugene Robinson and Bob Herbert. As this community has grown, others fulfill that function.
As I have more time after soccer, I may from time to time comment on news stories or opinion pieces, if I feel I have something of value to offer.
I will write about books, as I have more time for the kind of reading and reflection necessary to do a decent job. Some will not be particularly political, but I think might be of value.
I do note that I regularly get asked if I want to write about books, or speak with authors. I believe that at one point DK provided a list of emails of people that publicists/publishers could contact, I was on it, and I still get at least half a dozen inquiries a week. We’ll see what the time allows me to do.
Finally, about where we are as a nation and society. I am seriously worried not only about what is happening to America, but what I also see happening in other countries. I see the malign effects of what can perhaps best be described as transnational conspiracies of various sorts, some of which would have shocked people even a few decades back. It would have been hard to imagine the leadership of countries previously at loggerheads such as Israel and Saudi Arabia actively cooperating, in that case because of a mutual fear of the influence of Iran. We see increasingly the influence of institutions that are seemingly beyond the control of any individual nation — some are corporations that have grown too big and too rich, others are quasi-political movements that are intended to impose a vision of the world that I find horrifying in its implications. I see an ongoing diminution of economic, political, and individual liberty in part caused by ginning up of fear and hatred of others, often deliberately done as a means of obtaining/maintaining power.
This actually relates to what I do for a living. Yes, some of my students have very distorted visions of things. Recently I had one fairly bright student opine in class that he was not sure the moon landing was real. Process that for a moment. I have a few students who might well wear red MAGA hats were it not a violation of the dress code. More common is that students really are at a loss of what information they can trust — the firehose of blather that Trump and his supporters put out can cause people to throw up their hands in frustration and blame everyone. Here how our media has operated is very much of a contributor to this mess.
And as I see norms of government under constant attack, I have the challenge of balancing in my teaching what the government is supposed to be and what my students see happening every day.
This a long post.
I acknowledge that it can be considered rambling, lacking a sharp focus.
Perhaps not many will read it. So be it.
I have been somewhat removed from a community in which I have been for a decade and a half one of the more visible members.
I felt I owed some explanation, in case anyone noticed my absence, and even if they did, if they cared.
In part I felt moved to write this by the passing of OPOL, Randy, whom I got to know at one of the earlier conventions (I think it was Austin), and with whom for a good number of years I was an online buddy. Reading the responses on the notice of his passing, I decided I owed this community an explanation of my absence.
I will be here more frequently as the time goes on.
I may even have some worthwhile insights to share, although certainly I will not be the judge of their value.
In the meantime, I offer in hope what was for so long my closing salutation:
Peace.