Jackson Free Press

I have always measured the quality of my education against what my father taught me. School bored me mostly, but having a conversation with Papa rarely did. He was a natural teacher of philosophy, political science and history. He peppered his lectures with anthropology, science and economics.

Papa fueled my burn for knowledge. He taught me to question the status quo (and just about everything else), to listen deeply and never to be afraid of voicing a considered opinion. As I came into adulthood, his nightly dinnertime lectures evolved into hours-long explorations into politics, civil rights and current events. Eventually, no subject was taboo.

I got a thrill each time I presented a point of view he hadn't considered. He would pause, chewing the information in his big brain, weighing it, spinning it and looking at it from all angles. At those times, Papa had no ego. He could dismiss any opinion--even one he was energetically defending just a moment ago--in favor of another with more merit. He was one of the most authentic, clearest thinkers I have ever known, and I was blessed to have him as a teacher.

One lesson I learned from Papa was to be open to, yet wary of, what I heard and read. Never take anything at face value, he taught. But second-guessing everything is a hard road. It tends to piss people off, especially those who would rather I not ask questions such as "why?" "according to whom?" or simply, "really?" It drives me to challenge my foregone conclusions. Sometimes, that's painful.

I recently followed a Facebook post to an editorial in the National Review. I was fairly certain from the title ("The Liberal Enforcers") that I wouldn't like what I found, but I read the piece from start to finish, anyway. In it, author Mark Steyn presented, in an overheated and hyperbolic screed, his case that liberals will gang up on anything (in this case, the Susan G. Komen Foundation) to ram "Big Tolerance" down our collective throats.

He's clever. Steyn uses lots of $10 words and citations coupled with a copious application of teeth-gnashing over liberalism in general. You could find yourself nodding in agreement, caught up in the drama. I could just see Steyn raising his hands to put air quotes around the left's faults: "women's health" organization Planned Parenthood; "reproductive rights" correspondent Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones; "the 1 percent"; "poor women." I imagined the accompanying wink-wink, nudge-nudge mannerisms. I wanted to smack the smirk off his headshot.

Even if I agreed with his thesis, I couldn't give a pass to any information presented with such disdain and downright nastiness. (I wouldn't give one to Barack Obama, either, if you're wondering, or to the myriad progressive organizations with which I agree for the most part.) No one gets to rewrite the story simply because they don't like it. Show me the research--primary research, please. No opinion blogs allowed. Turns out, Steyn wasn't as scrupulous in compiling all of his "facts."

Of all forms of tyranny, perhaps the worst is convincing people that they are powerless to effect change. The tool to convince us is easy to generate: fear. Smart operatives use fear to maneuver us to do exactly the wrong thing, even act in opposition to our best interests. They know that fearful people--afraid of losing liberties, money, position or life--are easily outraged. Angry and defensive, we stop thinking. That's the point.

Papa came of age in one of the most authoritarian environments imaginable: The Nazi party dominated every nuance of thought and life in its sphere. It wasn't simply that the party bombarded people with its twisted rhetoric; they literally risked their lives and the lives of loved ones to speak out, much less fight against its absolute repression. Afraid, most people went along with it all, regardless of how horrible things got.

Maybe that's the biggest failure of education: not teaching us to recognize our weakness for security and the easy path; not teaching us we have other options. Never learning to lean into our innate boldness leaves us with tolerance for ineptitude and dishonesty. It serves no one. What's left is a quivering bundle of low expectations--for our leaders, schools and our daily failures to rise above our personal status quos. Instead, we embrace solutions for problems that don't exist anywhere but between our ears.

Teaching a child to push beyond comfort and convention has to begin early. It's a learned skill, like grasping the power of reading, writing and arithmetic. It's not enough to memorize the words and equations; without understanding why and how to use what we learn, knowledge loses its significance. Without significance, things become irrelevant, and I can't think of any reason to respect irrelevance. And isn't that where we've landed on education?

Instead of respecting knowledge and those who impart it, we pay teachers a pittance (as befits those who give little of value) and turn our kids into mindless test-stressed drones, eager to be done with it all. It's not surprising that we grasp at any alternative that promises to make things even a little better.

But that doesn't get to the root of the cancer. We're fond of moving the pieces without changing the rules, but we have a self-defeating bias for the illusion of stability that keeps us in an endless loop of educational failures.

We have the power to make fundamental, systemic change, but exercising our power is never easy. In confronting our prejudices and distortions, we will run into our own brick wall of resistance, powerless at times to even see them, much less rise above them.

Spiritual author Marianne Williamson wrote: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." That light is our fuel for growth, change and making a difference. We all have it.

"As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others," she continues, and that may be the scariest part of all.

Look, change is as inevitable as February. We can resist it, or we can grab hold and ride that bucking bronc, flailing and falling and getting back on. Change my mind. Please. I welcome evolving, precisely because it's not easy. Don't expect me to go along just to get along. That's not a horse worth riding.

Papa taught me that, too.