Post by Chris_Wendt on Jan 20, 2009 10:59:16 GMT -5
History is being made today, perhaps unparalled in our lifetimes, but perhaps not, depending upon what the future holds. But in retrospect, which is the only way to look at history, the inauguration of Barak Obama is certainly a watershed event for the United States of America.
This event, today's milestone and all of the ceremony, pomp and circumstance surrounding the festivities in Washington DC should not go unnoticed, unwitnessed, unobserved by our children...including during their school day, as it happens.
In Wantagh, 'cultural education' is a difficult undertaking at best, owing primarily to the lily-white makeup of our community and our immediate neighboring communities, Seaford, Levittown, Island Trees, Plainedge and Bellmore. Our faculty and staff are also comprised mostly of white people who speak English. Certainly, over the years we have made token attempts at cultural appreciation, focused mostly on irrelevant foreign customs and costumes. Irrelevant because these do not reflect the true, daily experiences of people whose culture is different from our culture, here in Wantagh, be those experiences relative to immigration, here, from homelands abroad, or, very different realities in other lands, where English is hardly ever heard spoken, some where God is known as Allah, or Krishna...perhaps where women have no rights, or where so many people have no food or shelter.
Today provides a much more relevant cultural educational experience for our students than Mexican Hat Dances, Pinatas, or the Polish Polka or Wiener Schnitzel. But I am not speaking as much about the experience of President Obama or even of his own family on this, their big day.
I am speaking much more specifically of the meaning and significance of today's events for those throngs of black people assembled in our nation's capital...for the clumination, the realization of a dream, articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and brought to fruition by the life's works of John F. Kennedy, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George Wallace, and The Little Rock Seven, Rosa Parks, and countless others, some of whom also made what we ceremoniously refer to as "the Supreme Sacrifice" in order to change the minds and hearts...of a nation.
While today is historical for our nation, including all of us, I venture to say that we, in Wantagh, can hardly imagine the personal importance of this momentous occasion to almost any of our fellow Americans whose appearance and whose heritage and family traditions are far different from our own.
Chris Wendt
This event, today's milestone and all of the ceremony, pomp and circumstance surrounding the festivities in Washington DC should not go unnoticed, unwitnessed, unobserved by our children...including during their school day, as it happens.
In Wantagh, 'cultural education' is a difficult undertaking at best, owing primarily to the lily-white makeup of our community and our immediate neighboring communities, Seaford, Levittown, Island Trees, Plainedge and Bellmore. Our faculty and staff are also comprised mostly of white people who speak English. Certainly, over the years we have made token attempts at cultural appreciation, focused mostly on irrelevant foreign customs and costumes. Irrelevant because these do not reflect the true, daily experiences of people whose culture is different from our culture, here in Wantagh, be those experiences relative to immigration, here, from homelands abroad, or, very different realities in other lands, where English is hardly ever heard spoken, some where God is known as Allah, or Krishna...perhaps where women have no rights, or where so many people have no food or shelter.
Today provides a much more relevant cultural educational experience for our students than Mexican Hat Dances, Pinatas, or the Polish Polka or Wiener Schnitzel. But I am not speaking as much about the experience of President Obama or even of his own family on this, their big day.
I am speaking much more specifically of the meaning and significance of today's events for those throngs of black people assembled in our nation's capital...for the clumination, the realization of a dream, articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and brought to fruition by the life's works of John F. Kennedy, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George Wallace, and The Little Rock Seven, Rosa Parks, and countless others, some of whom also made what we ceremoniously refer to as "the Supreme Sacrifice" in order to change the minds and hearts...of a nation.
While today is historical for our nation, including all of us, I venture to say that we, in Wantagh, can hardly imagine the personal importance of this momentous occasion to almost any of our fellow Americans whose appearance and whose heritage and family traditions are far different from our own.
Chris Wendt
