Sunday, November 2, 2014

Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin

"Who are our two Wisconsin senators?"

This question always stumps my class. Students answer with blank looks, shuffling feet, and checking the sky outside the classroom windows for contrails from an imperial galactic invasion. Keep in mind that these are adults I'm speaking of not fourth graders. Bright, intelligent, responsible adults with families and jobs draw a uniform blank stare when you ask them who represents them in the United States Senate. I have never had a class at any level who was able to name both. One senator perhaps, but not both.

Sad, very sad.

These students come to mind when I watch the biannual blitz to persuade people to vote on the first Tuesday in November. The founding fathers count on you, an earnest voice proclaims in public service announcements, an informed, dedicated citizenry, to wisely guide our representative democracy through your individual vote. Of course, the founding fathers were really counting on an informed, dedicated white male land-owning elite citizenry, but that's another column.

Cynical commentators say the 10-15 percent voting attendance by citizens shows the decline of American democracy. They say that vicious partisan battles have worn down the collective citizenry to such a point that most would rather not dirty their hands in this unpleasant business. Cynical commentators say that that the low-level interest in politics is a direct result of our unhappines with the antics we hear about in city hall, the Madison statehouse and Washington, D.C. Cynical commentators say we get the politicians we deserve through our indifference to the process. Perhaps the cynics are right.

Yet, perhaps they are not. George Eliot once said, "It is never too late to be what you might have been." Giving up is not American.

After my students fail the quiz about their senators, we talk about the series of unlikely events that led to the founding of this nation, to the extraordinary promise of the Declaration of Independence, to the first flawed treaty between the new states called the Articles of Confederation, and to our uniquely American expression of political compromise, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Students learn that our nation's history has not been an unbroken string of successes. Cynics of every generation have written this country off, but, somehow, what we agreed to in 1787 has survived and prospered.

Most of us do not have more than a back of the cereal box knowledge of the history of the United States. With discussion, and assignments, and projects, I hope to show my students how remarkable this country is and how the exercise of citizenship is not just a November obligation but a lifetime responsibility (I also hope that they pass the GED Social Studies test, but that is also another column).

Each year at about this time I remind the students to vote on Tuesday. I don't care who they vote for. That's not my job. I just want to remind them to get their butts to the polls while I show them how voting does matter. US history is full of such examples. Some of them do vote for the first time in many years. Others still don't. But, perhaps, I planted a seed of guilt that will grow to participation on a later Tuesday. I would consider that a success.

At the least, I hope these students remember who their two senators are.


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