Tag: students

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More Than Memory

We throw hats. And then we lay flowers.

What an odd weekend we’ve given ourselves here.

It’s easy to miss. Heaven knows I usually do. On the one hand, we send our young people into the world with love and benedictions and way too many recitations of “Oh, The Places You’ll Go.” And then we’re asked to stop a moment for those who have already left the world, wanting to protect it and to build a better one.

Graduation day. Memorial Day. We set them side by side: the flag and the Mylar balloon, the endless drone of “Pomp and Circumstance” and the quiet sound of “Taps.” It’s the strangest of couples, as if someone wanted to talk about Batman and Hammerstein, or Ernie and Juliet.

And yet, it does fit.

It all starts with the quiet.

That may sound even stranger. After all, between graduation parties, backyard grills, and the Indy 500, this can be a loud and busy time. Too busy for some. From the 1870s to today, it’s been traditional to lament that the fun side of Memorial Day (and Decoration Day before it) has overwhelmed the call to stop and reflect, that we’re doing it wrong.

Which, now that I think about it, is a strange way to put it. Because uniquely among American holidays, we’re not asked to “do” anything on Memorial Day. Not buy presents or string lights. Not fire rockets and sing songs. Not pass around cardboard hearts, or drink green beer, or talk like a pirate from a bad Errol Flynn movie.

What we’re asked to do is remember. But that’s only the start.

Because memory unacted on is lost.

Our recent graduates can attest to that, or soon will. Most spent hours trying to memorize as much as possible for their final exams. (Or desperately wishing they had.) At this time next year, most of those answers will be gone – except maybe for some lasting embarrassment at writing “Lin-Manuel Miranda” instead of “Alexander Hamilton” on a history test.

What will stay, or should, is the memory of how to think, how to research, how to organize, how to interact with others in a productive way, and even how weird and amazing other people can be. Why? Because that’s what you did. That’s what you practiced. That’s what you learned.

So this Memorial Day, after memory – what next?

It’s good to remember the fallen. It’s necessary to tell the stories, to raise the ghosts, to bring their memories to life again. But if the sun sets and the memory falls back into the dust until next year, how much respect have we really shown?

Memory unacted on is lost. And the way to act is to build.

Build the world they wanted to see and never did.

Build anew the freedoms that were worth their life – including the freedom to argue and disagree, to challenge and question, to preserve the nation by daring to examine and even improve its underpinnings.

Respect, yes. Live together as a nation, yes. But even more so, live together as a free nation, recognizing how many ways there are to live in freedom. And stand together against those would abridge even an inch of it.

Just as those we honor once stood.

It’s not about glory and uniforms and parades. It’s not about watchfulness and fear. It’s about carrying on a promise.

Remember. Then act. That’s how we learn. And it’s how we create something worth remembering.

Shall we commence?

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Making an Im-Press-ion

(Appeared first in print 4/10/2017)

When you’re a teenager, it’s easy to wonder if you’ll ever make a difference.

That’s not a problem for the kids of Pittsburg High School. Not after turning their southeast Kansas school newspaper into a star of investigative journalism, and turning their school’s administration upside down in the process.

Yes, really.

For those who missed it, the teens probed into the background of their newly hired principal and found that some of her credentials didn’t seem to add up – in particular, that the university where she earned two of her degrees didn’t appear to be an accredited institution or even to have a physical address or working website. In fact, they discovered, it had a reputation as a “diploma mill.”

By the time they were done, what could have been a routine story about a new principal ended up by asking some very awkward questions. Awkward enough that the principal announced her resignation, just a month after her hiring.  By then, the kids had the attention of the national media and the thanks of the school district’s superintendent.

“We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” 17-year-old Connor Balthazor told the Washington Post. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great mo ment for us.”

I’ll add my own applause to that. These are the kind of lessons that need to be learned, not just by high school journalists, but by any citizen in a democracy.

And it happened because the kids had the opportunity to learn, the freedom to act, and the initiative to do something about it.

Kansas school papers, like Colorado ones, have a guaranteed freedom of the press for high school journalists. (In fact, Colorado passed that guarantee while I was still in high school myself.)  The schools have only a limited ability to restrict what appears in the paper – mainly, things like libel or obscenity – allowing students, like their grown-up counterparts, to work uncensored.

But that only matters if you have writers who are willing to go past the obvious. And much journalism, whether high school or professional, is comfortable to stick with the routine. The state championship winners. A new class or a retiring teacher. Much of it is necessary stuff, but it doesn’t often demand much of the writer or the reader.

To go further, a good reporter needs to remember two principles. Always ask the next question. And always verify the answers you get, even if they seem to make sense. Especially then. “If your mother says she loves you,” the old newsman’s saying goes, “check it out.”

In a day when many newspapers are folding (no pun intended) and when social media allows the half-true and the false to circulate more rapidly than ever before, that’s an important skill for everyone.

These kids have learned it. And then some.

And in the process, they’ve taught a few lessons of their own.

They’ve shown a reminder that learning isn’t limited to the classroom, the test, and the textbook. The extracurriculars – newspaper, theatre, music, and more – offer a host of valuable lessons for the student who’s willing and able to take advantage of them.

They’ve reminded us that an alert media can make a difference. That an alert citizenry can make a difference. All it takes is a willingness to look, and a determination to keep looking.

They’ve even given us some hope for the future, that the next generation is ready and eager to join the conversation.

That sounds like a lot to build on one article in one school paper, I know. But they’ve worked to build it. And I suspect they’ve learned that it’s a work that never stops. The name of “journalist” is always being re-earned. Much like the name of “freedom” or “democracy.”

Let’s get to work, shall we?