Opinion

As primaries roll out around the country, we’re tracking voter turnout. Raised on Schoolhouse Rock’s cartoon civics lessons, I know that being a good American means voting.

In a traditional classroom setting, learners are often told what they need to know. They are taught or shown to memorize subject material or the steps of a process. This information later culminates in an assessment (test or report) illustrating how to use what was learned. While this methodology will always have some merit and use in acquiring certain skills, the pedagogy of project-based learning has truly upped the game in creating a dynamic classroom.

As we go back to our discussion timeline—interrupted by my educational “Preamble”—the dominant assertion has become “this land is my land.” As suggested in the Preamble, there are now so many nationalities and age ranges represented, and so many conflicts have emerged, that “Go west, young man” has become separatist fighting words. The language of the Constitution about equality and shared values and memories of pre-“American” values have weakened. As George Santayana warned, “Progress depends on retentiveness . . . when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are con-demned to repeat.” Indeed, we need to add another caution, granted us by Helen Keller: “I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within reach of everyone.” With that came John Soule’s hopeful, yet cautious, charge: “Go west, young man, go west, and grow up with the land.” Even as we look to that hope, we also have to recall the bias enshrined in Meriwether Lewis’ assertion: “We were about to penetrate a country two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was experiment yet to determine.” For breadth I add this political observation from Alexander Hamilton: “Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conform-able to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.”

One Sunday afternoon, a cranky grandfather was visiting his family. As he lay down to take a nap, his mischievous grandson decided to have a little fun by putting Limburger cheese on Grandpa's mustache. Soon, Grandpa awoke with a snort and charged out of the bedroom saying, “This room stinks.” Through the house he went, finding every room smelling the same. Desperately he made his way outside only to find that “The whole world stinks!”