Martin Luther King, Jr. Day has been designated by federal legislation as a "day of service" since 1994 (the first such day would have been celebrated in 1995). Today is the day, and I find myself working some Coast Guard issues, much like any other day -- I wish, for what it's worth, that my unit were doing something special out in the community today. I'll put that idea in my bag and try to pull it out next year at this time.I have been pondering teachers' great service to our country in the month since I took a day trip to my hometown of Berkeley Springs, WV, speaking with high schoolers about the Coast Guard's role as a federal agency in marine safety and environmental protection.
Last night I spoke with my mother on the phone. She is a high school teacher in Berkeley Springs, WV, in the very same classroom where I once sat through government, European history, and world history class. Hers was one of the classes I spoke to in December. I asked her how she was spending her long weekend, and she told me that she had 90 papers to grade. She has long believed that the value of social sciences is so that one can think deeply and articulate their thoughts about the world around them, not so that one can memorize facts that could easily be looked up online. Consequently, she assigns papers instead of multiple choice tests, and she spends much of her time reading and offering feedback.
Last month was not my first experience spending a day in front of a classroom, on my feet, engaging with students for seven straight hours, but it did remind me how hard teaching really is. A day of it is, in fact, one of the hardest, most taxing things that I have ever done. And those that make a career of it do this every day, day after day, year after year, usually without thought of promotion (where do you get promoted to once your in the classroom), and clearly without thought of striking gold with a teacher's paycheck.
Teachers are unique, because unlike the equally important service given by our medical personnel, men and women in uniform, and others who sacrifice in some way for the public good, education is the unique province of society that raises the bar of what is possible for individuals, families, organizations, and entire nations. It is the rock upon which our national ability to prosper through business, heal through medicine, explore through science, save through heroism, and deliver hope beyond our shores is based.
Teachers are the uniquest of heroes, dedicated to the prosperity of humanity through the expansion of the mind. And in a time when we have come face to face with the temporality of so many of our other assets -- wealth, power, influence, prestige -- it is this freedom of the mind and the hope that it inspires, as cultivated by our best teachers, the most humble of heroes, that may yet prove to be our most enduring and valuable possession.