A Restraint On The Patriotism, Please
I stood in my classroom on Monday morning, worn out from awaiting President Barack Obama’s announcement, waiting for the Pledge of Allegiance. Growing impatient with the pledge, I began to twirl the chalk in my hand while my students also reluctantly stood there. Anxious about next week’s math test, I scribbled the Objective and Do Now on the board when a student looked at me in her bubbly naivete and asked, “Mr. Vilson, what happened yesterday?”
“Not sure what you mean.”
“Well, like, something happened last night with something, like, really big.”
“You mean, Osama bin Laden?”
“Yeah, something like that. What was the big deal?”
I had to forgive her immediately. When the really big deal happened, she was only 3-4 years old, still piecing together the world presented to her. She couldn’t understand how tons of steel and cement decimated into
