“Fifty-four seems too young,” Linda
said.
She and I were sitting in her living room a few days after
Christmas of the year 2000, eating tamales from plates we held on our laps. I’d
known Linda longer than anyone who was not part of my family, and we hadn’t had
a chance yet to talk about the job—the career—I was leaving in just a few
months. I had no idea how to respond.
In the years I’d worked in schools and Linda had worked as
an urban planner, I’d heard her mention that educators worked less than a
full year, had all those long vacations, and spent only six hours a day working. She didn’t see
how jobs in schools could be very hard.
On that winter day, I didn’t tell her
that two principals I knew had simply cleaned out their desks and walked away
on days that were not even Fridays, let alone ends of semesters. I didn’t tell
her that after fifteen years, my job had come to feel like a game of pinball,
one where I was the ball. I’d sat silently for almost a minute when Linda
asked, “Do you think it’s futile?
Surprised at her use of this word, I put my fork down on my
plate and said, “No! It’s not futile. But I
can’t do it anymore.”
Growing up in the second half of the Twentieth Century, I
had regarded capital-P Progress as a sure thing. My post-war generation would,
I assumed, pitch in to keep things moving. By 1967, I had decided to do my part
by teaching school. I’d make sure kids could read, write, and compute, and I’d
also inoculate them with peace and justice. I didn’t plan on, or even imagine,
being a principal.
Thirty years after I chose to teach, the era that raised me
had run into trouble. While racial and gender equality increased in that time,
peace did not last. Prosperity became a more elusive goal, less a value of
community than a contest to be won by individuals. I did not foresee that in
the last years of the Twentieth Century, public education would no longer be
everyone’s favorite democratic institution.
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