How Can We Look Our Kids In the Face?
by Dr. Michael Flanagan
It was a nice summer night a couple of years ago, and my daughter was just learning to ride a bike. We were out in the parking lot of my building just as it was getting dark. I sat and watched her learn to steer and brake. A moment that is a touchstone in one’s life, that you hope your mind flashes back to when you leave this earth.
After a while she came and sat next to me and started talking about her life. “Where will I go to college?” “Where will I work?”
As I smiled, and said all the things a father is supposed to say like “Anywhere you want Honey. You can do whatever makes you happy”, my heart sank because I knew what I was telling her was a lie. I was looking at my daughter, at all the hope and potential that she had, juxtaposed with the terrible social, political and economic conditions of this planet and I feared for her future.
She was 10 years old.
I teach high school seniors who are four months away from graduation and I am sending them out into a country that is no longer even pretending to be a democracy. I write them recommendations, they receive their college acceptance letters, but I fear for their futures. In my government class I teach them from their textbooks about the magnificence of the Badass Teachers Association: How Can We Look Our Kids In the Face? by Dr. Michael Flanagan: