This will be a short entry. I am wrestling with big topics, topics that don't have easy answers. Somehow I suspect that this torment is the desired result of my professors and others I've been conversing with about these topics.
The topics I'm wresting with are Democracy and Truth. Both arose from my doctoral class this weekend. It was the first week of my two new classes, Comparative Group Analysis (Stats 2) and Issues in Education. As with most math classes, no controversy in the stats class....but the Issues class got me thinking. Our theme for this weekend was Democracy in Schools. Originally, I was good with it and came up with several applications that model democracy for students at my school allowing them to truly experience democracy and learn at a you age about the benefits of being an involved citizen...but them it got deeper and less 'easy' to process and resolve.
Some of the questions running through my head are:
- When history writes our story, who gets to be remembered as 'right'?
- If everyone interprets the world through their own experience, traditions, beliefs, etc ...how can one 'true' version of history ever be documented?
- How can one know they are being told the truth about events, history, etc...?
- Is our democracy truly representing all?
- Is democracy open to all citizens in our country?
- How do/can schools prepare children to inherent and better our country, society, and world?
These are HUGE issues in our country and in our world. But they are not easy and they may not have answers. At this point, I'm settling with the resolution that there's benefit in at least wrestling with the issues. Avoiding them would be the true harm.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
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