In this (and every) episode of With Honors, we try to do something simple but important: have a real conversation.
It seems that more and more often, we can't openly discuss the important things, because the important things lead to louder and louder arguments. Vitriol. Venom. Ideological entrenchment. But my purpose as a high school English teacher is to train our students to be better writers, critical thinkers, engaged readers, and more informed citizens.
The line is often thrown about these days that teachers are indoctrinating our children (except, we mostly joke, that if we could indoctrinate the kids, we would start by indoctrinating them to turn in their work and wear deodorant). But I truly believe that most teachers would reject that, instead envisioning ourselves not teaching the kids WHAT to think but rather teaching them HOW to think. I don't want kids to merely parrot what a teacher tells them any more than I want them to have ChatGPT write their essays for them. I want kids to ask questions. I want them to question everything. We as parents, teachers, preachers, lawmakers, bosses, influencers, corporate tycoons, etc. have engineered a society with a set of rules. And it's my job as a parent, as a teacher, to help maintain those rules for the young who aren't yet ready to move beyond them. Like the Jurassic Park keepers, we maintain the fences to maintain the park. But eventually, the raptors test the fences. Kids test those rulesets. It's natural. I think the normal process of growing into adulthood requires us not only to test these fences but also one day to break them down. Because then we must figure them out for ourselves. Rebuild those walls, those rulesets, in the way we believe they are meant to be. Sometimes you keep the same bricks that were handed down to you, and sometimes you keep these bricks but not those bricks, or maybe you place them back in a different order. Becoming an adult means figuring out the paradigms for yourself and rebuilding them to be better.
Which leads us back to the classroom. With Hunter and Solomon, talking Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451.
Originally Hunter had designed this to be a discussion about "Communist indoctrination and Fahrenheit 451," which had me hesitant. I didn't know if he had an agenda to push about Bradbury peddling a Communist agenda, or if he aimed to argue that the novel is the fulfillment of Communist teachings. But it turned out to be another down-to-earth conversation about what we read, what we think, what we don't know enough about, and what we hope for the future. Even though I knew we would find ourselves to be reasonable, it still surprised me how much the boys and I ended up agreeing upon. It gives me hope that, even in as argumentative and polarized a society as we seem to live in today, most people probably inhabit the calm, reasonable middle. It leads me back to a maxim I have reasserted again and again this year: if we can't talk about everything, then we can't talk about anything. We should be able to talk about it all. Not yell at each other. Not be unreasonable. But talk, and listen.
Hopefully, you believe the world needs more real conversations, not just louder ones. In that case, this episode is for you.
You can find With Honors
on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=1HS8tQGXRyOgn1h5bs2pTg
on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480
on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w
Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman's Books. He's on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=I5Tt07unQJWVhaFVsInP8A and Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942
This episode features inspiring piano music by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
