For this week’s blog, I thought I would reprint an open letter that students will be hearing this week. I feel that it covers much of what we are doing both as emerging scholars in American History as well as stakeholders at Percy Julian Middle School. It is in response to a situation or two that has proven to be a situation or two too many. I place it in this context, but its application lies beyond American History, beyond C105, beyond Team 7-1 and to the future of all of our students and Percy Julian Middle School:
I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the context that envelops it. I think it is a sad affair whenever such situations must be addressed, but I believe this is where we are. To neglect it as both a teacher and a student of history would be tantamount to a sin of omission that would give strength to the forces of oppressive silence and emasculate the power of hopeful change that must embrace our school, our community, and our nation.
As your history teacher this year, I felt that I have gone to great ends in assisting your maturation as thinkers, as bourgeoning scholars. I told you at the start of the year that “each of you will be a scholar or farther along the path by the end of the year.” I have held true to this each and every day this year. Whether it is posting the schedules with quotes from Rodin or President Kennedy, or utilizing the LCD projector with a PowerPoint Slide explaining what our daily goals are to be, or individually speaking with students about where we need to be and how we are going to get there, the critical ingredient that has underscored our work, yours and mine, this year has been this notion of growth, emerging scholarship, and making progress. While this has all been true, I am committed to the idea that the journey of scholarship is not an isolated and atomized process. Rather, it is a vision that embraces all members of the community. We are not alone. We are inextricably linked to a social setting where all stakeholders have to share our vision. There is a distinct line- a frontier or border- drawn between those who share our vision and those who do not.
America has been a nation of these borders or frontiers, lines that demarcate where we are and where we hope to be. Our history is one of pursuit of horizons. Whether it was the sun drenched terrain that allowed us to envision a world where freedom was a reality, or the wilderness that met our eyes as expansion became a reality, our history has been one where we seek to appropriate our dreams, our visions. A theme in our nation has not to be content with what we possess, but rather actively seek to change our world by focusing on new borders, or frontiers as attempting to configure ways in which these arenas can move from what would be into what is. Sometimes, we have succeeded and other times, we have failed. When we have succeeded, our history has told us that we regale in what had worked, and when we have failed, there has been a process in which reflection has allowed us to see the error of our ways. In both situations, we, as a nation, have understood the importance of lines, and drawing them. We have sought to gain greater appreciation for being on the right side of these lines. This is an ongoing process that a young nation like ours has learned to appreciate.
I believe that our school, our academic community known as Percy Julian Middle School, is much the same way. We seek to expand our territories guided by new horizons and the desire to appropriate these vistas into our understanding of who we are and who we hope to be. As long as I have been working at this school, and as an employee of District 97, I have been guided by this particular understanding. I believe in the ideas of evolving, continually seeking new horizons, and reflection so that something better can be achieved and grasped. These ideas have worked their way into my teaching, and as my students, I am sure you can see where they are at work in every day that I have joyfully served in the capacity of your guide through the harrowing terrain of American History. As you approach the end of your journey, it would be a good opportunity for you to engage in this reflection in seeing how far you have come and how far you need to go in order to achieve your particular horizon, your specific border, and where you will need to be in terms of where you are.
I also believe that we, as an academic community, must focus our energies on forces that seek to take away from this growth, this maturation, this dialectic. In order to do this, we have to take dialogues that exist in the private and confront them in the public. Recently, some members of our community have spoken and articulated ideas that attempt to take away from our good work. They have spoken words that do not seek to enhance community, but rather divide us. They have attempted to present a vision that detracts from what it is we do at this school. While it has not been many who have engaged in such reprehensible and repugnant behavior, it is one too many. One of the most beautiful aspects of our history as a nation has been the self corrective measures that we, as America, have embraced at many points in our history. When wrongs have been committed, we have confronted these realities. It might not have been a perfect process, but we prove to be one of the few nations who can prove to be strong enough to engage in a reflection of what we have done wrong. Sometimes, this process is as important as any notion of product. I believe that we, as members of Percy Julian Middle School, must emulate this right now, at this time, at this moment.
In the last week, there have been statements, jokes, and words whose expressed purpose is to divide us, attempting to separate us from achieving our greatest of horizons and vistas. I would like to take this opportunity to denounce and reject such statements. These words and sentiments do little to build bonds between one another, and do even less to contribute to the academic community to which all of us have to be committed. I cannot surmise as to why these jokes or ideas were articulated. I can only presume that they were said to demonstrate popularity, or to falsely believe that in speaking them, one would enhance their own reputation. Regardless, I would like to condemn these statements in the strongest manner possible. As a teacher, I find them repulsive and disgusting. As a learner of American History, I have to find them as representing the antithesis of democracy, goals to which the Founding Fathers would have suggested tear us away from achieving our vision of the world’s oldest and most enduring democratic government. Under most circumstances, when students do wrong, I believe that the disciplinary channels best do their part and I neednt comment. Yet, with this particular transgression, to remain silent would be sinful and, in a bizarre manner, would actually embolden those who speak such horrific words and those who stand idly by allowing such terror to happen.
I believe that all of us, adults and students, alike must draw a line. We must create a border, or world, where such sentiments cannot be felt or articulated in this, a house of learning, a community of scholarship. I feel quite strongly in this, as evidenced by your learning experience on 7-1 this year. I believe that your teachers have done a very stellar job in articulating how elitism and division cannot exist in the “more perfect union” we call America and Percy Julian Middle School. When we speak of the Colonists and the American Revolution, we recalled this struggle for identity as applying to all inhabitants of the new nation. When we spoke of Don Quixote, we spoke of a world where justice and dreams could be realized, where the monsters and windmills had to be slain at every turn. When we articulated the conception of the Constitution, we spoke of “The Dream” for all citizens and how the most powerful document in American Society was compelled to speak for all of its citizens, and to this day, such a standard is still applied. When we examined the growth of economic America, we noted that there was a countervailing force that sought change at all costs. Finally, the emergence of what Senator Obama calls, “the original sin” of slavery, is something that was worth fighting for and even dying for in the minds of Americans. At many points, your teachers have instructed you on how the concept and applications of stratified structures that reaffirm segmentation in a democratic society are opposite of its professed values and cannot be tolerated.
This same line must be drawn at this moment in the life of Percy Julian Middle School. As adults and children, we must all decide on which side of the line we will stand. On one side would be the forces of divisiveness and the corresponding reality of disgust. On this side would be those who seek to separate students from one another. These forces seek to separate on the basis of race, gender, choices in friends, fashion, popularity, or any other factor that would prevent all of Julian students and staff from realizing the goals that we, as a building, are driven to achieve. This side of the line is met with its other side. On this side are individuals who are committed to building community, and respecting individuals’ rights to be free and to even be left alone. This side of the line is filled with people, students and adults, that understand how all of us are invested in recognizing our goals, as a school, as a community, as a people. We must pull as many people as possible to this side of the debate. We must seek to enlist as many individuals as possible for we on this side face an uphill battle. This is nothing new to us because being on the side of reform has always been a challenging battle. Yet, we smile at this challenge for we are “Renegades of Change” and we will not be deterred from recognizing our goal. We will stand tall with our label of “Renegade of Change.” As renegades, we recognize on what side of the line we stand. We also understand who we are and we understand the most important fact: We are the majority. We are the ones in control. There are more of us than there are more of them. As renegades of change, we understand who we are, in what we believe, and we must embrace the fact that there are more of us. Take a look around and see how many of us stand on this line and will be willing to stand up for it by taking a step across it.
This is where we are right now. All of us, students and adults alike, must choose on which side of the line we are. There is no middle ground. Either we as individuals will speak out and/ or act by separating ourselves from the forces of division and disgust. There can be no such thing as trying to straddle both worlds. All of us have to choose. I think that since you have one more year left in this building, all of you will have to engage in some serious reflection. All of you will have to decide where you are. If someone around you speaks words or sentiments that are meant to achieve cheap laughs at the cost of someone else, then you must decide what you will do. If you stand by and allow it to happen, you are as guilty as those who utter it for you are not a renegade of change, one who will not be able to act upon the promise of such a great nation as America. If you allow it to happen to one person today, it will invariably come to you tomorrow. We have always argued that America is a collection of people “who sat at the loser lunch table.” This is who we are, and it is our La Mancha, or stain. There is no way to avoid it. The only thing we can do is declare our allegiances. It is something that is in our DNA as Americans. For us to divide amongst one another, whether it is through elitism, through the forces of self belief in superiority, or through the idea that certain people can be demonized and targeted is a betrayal of who we are as a people and a nation.
This will be the hardest thing for all of you. Some of you are afraid to speak out and actively take a stand against these forces. You rationalize these forces of intolerance by believing in ideas such as “I cannot change them” or “It’s not me” or “They didn’t mean it.” Allow me to suggest that these are paths of “false consciousness” or simple lies. These are ways for you to avoid doing what you know is right, what you know has to be done. Simply put, if you believe these untruths, you “haven’t done the right thing.”
Now is the time for you to stand up and do the right thing. I cling to the fact that there are more of us renegades of change. As I strongly denounce and reject the recent statements that make light of terrible events in our history as a nation, statements that seek to make humor at terrible moments of our scars or our stains, I ask for all of your support. I ask for all of you to take a stand and actively distance yourself from such actions that bring a bad name to all of us. I ask for all of you to recognize that which I have strove to impart in you. This is everyone’s problem for it goes at the heart of to who we are. I ask all of you to embrace your natural tendency, that of being a renegade of change. I ask all of you to denounce and speak out in the strongest terms possible statements and people that seek to reduce all of us to the lowest common denominator.
I ask all of you to embrace those things that are best as we seek to establish a new horizon in our community, a new border that recognizes who we are and what our dreams seek to be.
From gardens and nightingales to renegades and embracers of change, I wish you happy hunting in the time we have left.
All best.
Mr. Kannan
