Anyone who has read some of the series of thoughts I’ve set down over the past year and a half or so is aware that I have done my level best to avoid most news stories during the pandemic. The dreadful, downright depressing atmosphere set forth from 2016-2020 was difficult enough and when that was coupled with the cataclysmic events of increasingly preventable illness and death it became too much so I read, ran, played golf, and listened to music.

Move ahead to fall 2021, we now live in a state where, for the most part, people seem to believe Covid doesn’t exit, though the weather does allow for mostly outside activity, we have also had our “booster” dose of the very effective and safe, vaccine and I really don’t seem to be all that concerned. None of that changes the fact that we, as a locality, as a nation, are increasingly divided and it seems, becoming more so by the day. I could not help but read about the “visit” to my former (and still dear to my heart) home state, CT by the incredibly idiotic MT Greene. The “rally” was filled with shouts still contradicting the results of a two year old election that has been more scrutinized for inaccuracy than anything I can remember (all for naught as each attempt was nothing more than an exclamation point on the fact that the election was accurate and the result fair).

Currently there is more division going on in the school district I taught in for a quarter century and which, to this day, still holds the best memories and where I still have many friends and connections. A small, but vocal, group of parents, none of whom has ever spent a single minute as an educator of any kind, keep spouting rhetoric where they presume to know it all and know exactly what the best policy is. The interesting part is that many of their ideas are housed in the same divisive areas as the political climate, they constantly say they want to engage in dialog, but then shout down anyone with a different viewpoint, the give you a list of things but when asked for the facts behind their list, they simply raise their voices and talk about how YOU only want to talk about it from your perspective, never, ever, giving any supporting documentation. The latest exchange though the press is a “reply” to a letter written by a 30 year educator written to point out how toxic the current treatment of supposedly valued staff is. The respondent, a former serviceman (yes, I am thankful for all those who choose to put their lives on the line and that includes this particular person), out of one side of his pen talks about how he does truly value the teachers and how it’s the administrators who don’t value their teachers (a glimmer of truth for some of them, but even painting that picture is done with a broad brush with no attention to detail and nothing more than out of context examples). Then, in the very next paragraph, he talks about how “you work for us”, perhaps the single best example, of going right back to the plantation mentality he has exhibited in the past (to the point that this particular individual had to resign a position based upon various public diatribes against many who did not look or believe like him. He talks about his kids crying when they come home because they hate wearing masks in school. Let’s think on that, both my wife and I taught with masks all day long and ALL of the kids in my classes and the overwhelming majority of the kids in her classes didn’t cry, didn’t object, they simply wore their masks. Why you may ask? That’s easy: 47 years in the classroom always showed the same thing, kids will do what is asked of them, especially when they are given solid reasons why, unless the guidelines or rules are constantly undermined and chipped away at on the home front. It is also interesting to me that these same contrarian parents always pepper their comments with the fact that “the schools/teachers seem to forget that the parents are our kids first and best teachers”. That, frankly, is a very, very true statement. I have never met a child who was born to hate, to disagree, to act up, to be entitled, that is learned behavior and I can pretty much tell you the it is not something taught in any school I have ever been a part of, so where does it come from? Yup, you guessed it, from the home they come from.

All of this division is born of the same thing: fear…fear that if someone has something different from you, or is given an advantage for some reason, it is at YOUR expense, or it is because you will then lose something. The amusing part is that most of the people who promulgate these ideas are being fed the ideas by those who don’t care about the people they are riling up [do you really think that #45 and his ilk gave two flips about what could happen to the 1/6 insurgents, no they were safe and in hiding]. You don’t have to be a statistician or even a magician to see that the states with the most obstinate leaders (all of whom are very, very well off themselves) have the worst education systems and worst health situations.

Division, for lack of a better word, is bad.