For more than 30 years, I've been - or at least, have tried to be - an agitator. The classroom has been my bailiwick, unsuspecting and complacent students my target. I am the sort of teacher who aims less to please than to annoy, to stir things up, to agitate. And it seems to me that a call for more such teachers is among the things - perhaps the thing - most needful for us all as American citizens. My purpose, I assure you, is not self-promotion. The stakes are far too high. So, let me explain, first, the problem uppermost on my mind, and second, why I think more and better teachers - teacher-agitators - are the one thing most needful for our polity, as well as what it means and what it takes to be such a gadfly.
Everywhere in our country, the vast consequences of September 11th continue, still, to unfold. But nowhere have they been more conspicuous than in the reawakening of our moral imaginations. Americans have always rallied in times of crisis, and this time is no exception. There is a new moral seriousness abroad, manifested by a redoubled desire to give and to serve, and by new efforts to promote the common good. But what to do, what to give - be it time, talent, or treasure - however well intentioned, is seldom self-evident.
And, more important, in the absence of obvious distress and disaster, civic or personal, why one should serve is, for many, even less evident. Compassion, however important, is finally not reliable. For service to country and your fellow citizen to become a lifelong habit, all of us, especially young people, need to understand why it is so crucial for the health and perpetuation of our common civic life. We need to know more history. We need to know more civics.
But that said, piling up more and better history and civics requirements will surely not be sufficient. Far more important than knowing facts and figures is knowing our civic principles, our lofty ideals - and, even more crucial, making them our own. We need, in short, to understand, appreciate, and agitate what it means to be an American. But given the current educational climate, I am less than sanguine that this will happen. Most of my teacher colleagues, and even more so the students I meet, even the most idealistic, are, at best, cynical about what it means to be an American. Indeed, more often than not, they are inclined to think that it does not mean anything much at all. Most everyone these days is a multiculturalist.
Moved largely by the seemingly salutary desire to promote ethnic and racial pride, multiculturalists fundamentally think of our nation as many separate and distinct cultures. Notwithstanding the commonality of the name "American," they regard these cultures, in decisive respects, as non-overlapping and mutually exclusive. What is called "American," then, describes, for them, only those who are white and of European descent. All other racial and ethnic groups are not and cannot be part of American culture. Indeed, any attempt to transcend race and ethnicity in the name of human individuality, or common humanity, never mind the natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is regarded as foolhardy.
Not too long ago, an incoming university student drove this home most vividly: In response to a colleague's description of his regular freshman seminar offering, which included the study of Sophocles' Antigone, Homer's Iliad, and Plato's Apology of Socrates, she quipped, "Oh, I see, you must be Greek." Not one of the 50 other students present at that orientation session dissented. Not even when prodded.
Seen in this light, however seemingly salutary its goals, our multicultural ethos should give us pause. Under its aegis, we are playing a very high stakes game. For if culture and race are really regarded as all-powerful determinants, and if human beings are not only marked but also decisively separated by ethnicity and race, how will we, American citizens, be able to sustain our common civic life and national polity? How can we even begin to think about our common good? What will keep us from justifying the group antagonisms that plague our society today? Even more troubling, what will sustain the tolerance necessary for the peaceful coexistence of the very subcultures that advocates of difference aim to preserve? Can many cultures really continue to coexist peacefully if we accentuate only the differences among them? If each of us as individuals is simply and indelibly stamped by our origins, and if we are therefore incapable of thinking freely and acting for ourselves, what happens to the essential American dream, the possibility of genuine, individual human dignity, the possibility of creating one's own future?
Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that cultural diversity is not important - nor even that it must lead to cultural antagonism, or is somehow incompatible with American unity. On the contrary, I believe that the study of our cultural pluralism can, in fact, contribute to a richer and deeper appreciation of American principles and of our lives as Americans. But for history and civics education to make the difference we desire, it will have to restore the understanding of many-ness in our nation's motto: E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one).
This is where more and better teachers come in. They can make it happen. But here's what it will take:
Teachers who know historical facts and figures, but even more important, who know the complex meanings, as well as the many possibilities of our nation's principles. Teachers who teach not for the test but for the real tomorrow, whose gaze is aimed not merely at student performance but at developing active, engaged, and responsible citizens. Teachers who take the time and have the patience to listen to, and to converse openly with, their students. Teachers who have the courage to examine their own long-accepted opinions, and to stir their students to do the same. Teachers who awaken students to look beyond their particular stories and to find commonalities with peers who are different from themselves, as well as with those who have come before them.
Long ago, Lincoln reminded us that the American creed requires dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal. He urged us to continually challenge ourselves to know the importance of this pursuit and to build its reality. We need teachers who will stir the knowing, so that the building can and will continue.
I challenge all teachers to think through their own opinions about this crucial matter. I also challenge them to become an annoyance to friends and neighbors: prod them to speak with you about our fundamental principles of freedom and equality, what they mean, and why they matter. Better yet, let me challenge each of you to go into our nation's classrooms, and to become a gadfly: annoy, agitate, stir your students toward the higher individualism and public service that will continue to allow our country to flourish.
Amy Kass is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and an advisor to the Lilly Endowment's Project on Civic Reflection. This editorial is adapted from a speech to the youth service organization City Year.
