A Word Problem

We know the election is over but we’re still sorting out all the lessons to be learned from it. One of the most important ones is: what do we teach our children and young students?
The election of a new U.S. president has always offered a historic lesson in what America is all about and how our democratic form of government is the best ever created. In past generations the election of John F. Kennedy signalled the launch of a New Frontier and a landing on the moon. Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 proved to be a “Morning in America” as he promised.
Our history books were rewritten when Barack Obama was elected the first black president in 2008 and many thought we would be rewriting them again this year when a first woman was to be elected.
But that’s not the lesson we’ll be teaching this year. The surprising win by Donald J. Trump is spinning historians and educators in circles trying to figure out what just happened in America.
In Sonoma County, parents and educators have other lesson plans to prepare as well. We have to explain to our children about legalized marijuana, now that passage of Prop. 64 makes adult recreational use as legal as drinking beer or wine. And, who among us has a cogent scientific lesson plan about GMOs — genetically modified organisms — and why we need to ban them from the county?
We’ve often longed for the past days of simpler times. Remember the fable about our first president George Washington and his father’s cherry tree? That was a simple lesson we could teach. Little George playfully chopped down his father’s favorite cherry tree with a new hatchet. When asked about it, George said, “I can not tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree,” suggesting that honesty is always the best policy. After all, it didn’t stop Washington from becoming President and father of our country.
Well, that lesson about honesty and becoming a U.S. president isn’t one we can use to explain the 2016 election is it?
Regrettably, an editorial written here last August titled “Words Matter” has now also been proven wrong. We wrote that name-calling, bullying and spreading hateful or racist messages had no place in presidential politics, on school campuses or in our communities.
We haven’t sorted out all the lessons of the Trump victory. Some can be reserved for adult political conversations but when it comes to telling the truth and explaining America’s values about tolerance, mindful speech and common decency, what do we tell our children?
On Election Night, TV political commentator Van Jones, a black man said this: “It’s hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids, don’t be a bully. You tell your kids, don’t be a bigot. You tell your kids, do your homework and be prepared. And then you have this outcome, and you have people putting children to bed tonight, and they’re afraid of breakfast. They’re afraid of … how do I explain this to my children?”
Other parents, those that are not Muslims, black or LGBTQ, might have an easier lesson to share about President-elect Donald Trump. He won fair and square and millions of Americans now want him to make big changes in the government.
But so far all we have are Trump’s words and we’re not sure how much words, like honesty, real facts and truth still matter.
John Oliver, the TV comedy host, said this after the election about Trump’s words: “That leaves us with two devastating options. Either we just elected a president who didn’t mean a single word he said or we elected one who did.”
That leaves us with a crappy lesson plan.
— Rollie Atkinson