I have not written recently; not because I didn't have something to say, but because I had too much to say, too much that has come rushing at me so that I feared babbling and saying things in the wrong way so that others brushed aside my ideas without thinking about them. I want what I write to cause thought and discussion, not immediate denial of my point of view.
And so as I sit now to write, I hesitate to say what I want to say for that same reason. Before you deny what I am saying, think about it, please. For several years, I have wondered about something I have believed in for many years and that is the right of an American citizen to speak his opinion.
For years, as a teacher, I believe that I never preached my ideas to my students. I did answer any question a student might ask about my opinion and I never felt any way but good about that. We were told that as teachers, we should answer our students honestly when they asked our opinion, but never to tell them that our opinion was the only opinion. I believe that was the way I conducted my classes.
I know that I had students in my classes who disagreed with me, and I believe that I never made them feel any way but good about having their own opinions. I know that I never made fun of them, or belittled them for disagreeing with me. And believe me, many subjects came up that we could have argued about. I hope that I always allowed for all of the varied opinions in free discussion.
I do know that doesn't go on much any more. There are teachers who are adamant that theirs is the only right opinion and insist that the class come to their ideas while there are other teachers who fear to state an opinion due to the fact that we are no longer a nation that honors the differing opinion. Have you noticed that?
There are some subjects on which we must all have the same answer, topics on which we have to agree, names we all must use. Have you noticed? It began innocently enough with a desire to remove a certain amount of rudeness from our culture. We wanted others not to use old derogatory terms about people. That was a good thing. From there, it seemed to go in all directions so that almost any term used to describe a person offended someone. At one time, the Mrs. in front of a woman's name was anathema as many feminists were incensed to have that and demanded that everyone use MS. I didn't want MS. I wasn't a MS; I was a Mrs.
From there, it went to the ridiculous use of he/she every time we wanted to refer to the unknown singular person. For years, we had used 'he' and suddenly we had to use he/she or we were ostracized. That is ridiculous, especially when English teachers demanded the use, as we had known forever that the 'he' referred to a singular person, not necessarily one of the male gender.
Frankly, I thought all of the political correctness was just short of silly; but this year, the entire thing has passed silly and arrived at anti-American. No matter what my opinion, I have never destroyed someone for voicing an opinion differing from mine.
This year when a judge asked Miss California her opinion about marriage and she gave her honest opinion, not only did he take time to blast her in every way about what she had said, but thereafter, every entertainment columnist also had something derisive to say about her. And it didn’t stop after she did not win the contest. Instead, it went on and on with the various writers deriding her for not agreeing with the majority of people in California. Oh … that’s not right. The people of California voted to keep Proposition 8. Oh .. . she seems to have had an opinion that disagreed with … entertainers.
Now, if that is the way we are going to treat those who disagree with those who have the microphones, we are all in trouble. Any one of us could be heard saying something with which others disagree. I could. We seem to be losing our ‘right of freedom of speech.’ I do know that teachers have lost that right. Perhaps, it has come because so many teachers abused it by drumming their own opinions into their students; perhaps, it has come because we are afraid that the teachers might disagree with our own opinions.
All I know is that fifteen years ago, I was not afraid to answer the question of what I thought about any given subject that came up in the classroom. Today, teachers are warned not to do so. Warned? Perhaps, threatened is more like it. I am afraid that it won’t end with teachers fearing to express an opinion that differs from the government or the school board or the students. What happens when newspapers or radio commentators fear expressing an opinion?
