Politics in the Classroom? Eh?

[Chris_Wendt]

I have been musing over how the Social Studies Department is planning to deal with the current in-your-face state of politics in America?

Will our high school social studies teachers be able to remain objective about the leading candidate and his non-politically-correct approach to campaigning?
Can they remain impartial to the his advocacy for strident immigration reform?

Oh, sure, for now, they may ignore him, or denigrate his chances for being nominated...elected.
But what will they say, how will the Wantagh High School deal with a Trump nomination by the Republican Party?

How will our teachers teach about the potentially very "teachable moments" when Trump is elected? ...when he is inaugurated President of the United States of America, the leader of the Free World?

Musing...musing...musing....

Chris Wendt

[Chris_Wendt]

I posted the lead to this thread 11 months ago, when Donald Trump was but one of a small herd of contenders for the Republican nomination for President. At the same time, Hillary Clinton was the heiress apparent to the Democrat nomination; after all, nobody in America, not even our most liberal thinking fellow citizens would ever take seriously an avowed Socialist's bid for the Oval Office. As you know, or perhaps not, Hillary Clinton was just today cited by the Inspector General of the State Department for her improper use of a private email server for official government business, and Bernie Sanders is going all-out in his attempt to "win" the California Democrat primary in June.

Donald Trump is less than 100 delegates away from mathematically clinching his nomination, and I believe he will have handily cleared the requisite majority by the time the last primary elections are tallied, when the final 297 delegates will be awarded two weeks from yesterday.

I am musing now more than ever about how our schools are dealing with these stunning phenomena. On Monday, my 7-1/2 year old granddaughter was pontificating to my wife and I on the faults of Hillary Clinton. She was able to articulate several points, and although she was parroting the sentiments of key adults in her life, she expressed at least a basic understanding of each point and why (if they were true) they were indeed "bad". My big take-away from that tête-à-tête was this: so much for the 'Gender Card'!

At the same time I am musing over politics in our schools, I am stressing over how would I ever be able to submit a ballot marked for Donald Trump to be President? Stressing because I absolutely could not vote for either Hillary or Bernie. But then, why stress, if the issue could be distilled to a Hobson's Choice for me?

My rationale at this juncture is to accept the fact of an actual revolution taking place in our time, and that, despite all the many reasons why I will hate to vote for Donald Trump, his ascent was not of his own making or merit, but rather was the result of the broken-ness of both parties and the utter corruption and calcification of our entire American system of what used to pass for a government.

School children may or may not comprehend the depth and breadth of this concept of political revolution, so I think it important for schools to consider how to deal with it...without alienating thousand of partisan parents and grandparents who have much to do with how their children and grandchildren process information and assess the world in which we all live.

Comments welcome.

Chris Wendt
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