"B" is for "Burden"

Writing my way through the alphabet: twenty-six ways of noticing

On my way home from one of the many doctor’s appointments I’ve had these days (the downside to moving from place to place is that you often neglect the routine care-taking of the body; this middle-aged body reminds me), I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio broadcasting live from the State Fair. David Brancaccio spoke briefly about a long-form interview he had with Kurt Vonnegut on PBS in 2005. Vonnegut, who– to me– is a brilliantly optimistic pessimist, says that “humans should be ashamed of themselves.” “Look I’ll tell you…” he says to Brancaccio, “ One thing that no cabinet has ever had, is a Secretary Of The Future. And there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.”

Imagine if our country had a “Secretary of the future,” a kind of sustainability officer, one who sat in on all of the important meetings and advocated for the children– all children. Just imagine.

Instead, we have burdened our children, our teens, our young-adults. We’ve saddled them with weighted vests packed with the responsibility not only to practice what to do if (when) an active shooter arrives, but also the responsibility to sacrifice themselves for their friends. They shoulder this violence. Kids, aged 5-18 have been practicing how/ where to hide if (when) a shooter arrives for their entire lives. Years ago, the practice was to stay in the room, lock the door, and black out the classroom window. When data showed that a covered window revealed a full classroom, there was a shift to keep the window to the hallway uncovered and tell students to hide in a way that they were not visible to the hallway. Then, it morphed to, if you can get out safely, do.

I’ve sat in high-school classrooms in Maine and New Hampshire and Buffalo and Minneapolis wondering. I'm an adult. My frontal lobe is fully developed. I have a partner, a house and a dog; I’ve healthy ways to process my feelings. And, I HATE these drills; I feel ill when sitting there. Like many teachers, it feels like it’s just a matter of time. Perhaps all teachers think this way. So, we try not to think about it.

Yesterday, ten-year-old Weston Halsne, a young student from Annunciation Catholic School, said “"We practice it [drills for dealing with violence] every month, but not in church, only in the school." This young person noted where they did NOT practice. We should be enraged. We should be screaming “wait, what?” We’ve accepted– embraced, really– this necessary disruption to the day. Anticipating violence, practicing how to respond, has become our norm?

A Secretary of the future would surely note that we’ve taught kids from kindergarten on to anticipate violent acts; we’ve taught them to practice how to save their third-grade-best-friend more effectively than I’ve taught The Great Gatsby.

We’ve burdened our children with something that we cannot even understand. And, we don’t care. A Secretary of the future would care. A secretary of the future would say, “Hey, our kids are stressed. Our kids are reminded– in the middle of playing the recorder– that someone wants to gun them down.” A Secretary of the future might even connect the extent to which this anticipatory practice impacts mental health, impacts the ability to trust, the willingness to open the door to a stranger and offer a meal.

Years before Vonnegut’s 2005 interview, he delivered the commencement address to the class of 1994 at Syracuse University. Early in the speech, he says:

First, I will say thank you. Second, I will say I am truly sorry - now that is the striking novelty among the three. We live in a time when nobody ever seems to apologize for anything; they just weep and raise hell on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The third thing I want to say to you at some point - probably close to the end - is, "We love you."

Throughout the commencement speech, he thanks them for being educated, apologizes for the state of society, and, true to his word, closes: "There was one thing I forgot to say, and I promised I would say, and that is, "We love you. We really do." He does not burden them. He tells them he loves them. And, he means it. They are humans about to head into the world beyond formal schooling, and they need to be told how valuable they are.

We– as a society in the United States– think that what we communicate to many of our children is that we love them, that they are our top priority. But, there is a subtext: we love you, but not enough.

I wish that we had a Secretary of the Future.