Making It Stick

Is the local newspaper a font of disinformation flowing for whatever reason I cannot discern or should I suppose its purpose is to work the readership into a kind of foaming frenzy in order a) to produce evermore emotional letters to the editor, and b) to evince an evermore self-fulfilling prophecy of anxiety and ill humor across the community?

Today we have two examples, the first is a woman who writes calling for schism of the American Catholic Church from the Roman Catholic orders based on such either sloppy or slimey charges as the rehearsed one that the new Pope Benedict was once a member of the Nazi youth, when indeed it is established fact that he was a) forced into that brood and b) resigned from it at his personal peril.

Why would a newspaper permit such a letter a) to go unedited (the offending text deleted) or b) to be published at all? (Consider this question with and to be a rhetorical sorrow.)

The second offense is, in fact, less with the newspaper than with those who have slyly managed to draw the newspaper into an ill-humored debate among tragic people: local teachers who would prefer not to reach out to the parents of their students vs the public school administration, probably one administrator or an unyielding school board. (This also probably means that the superintendent/administration of the school has offended the principle of open communications for which someone of note should now speak, but failing which, I will.)

A former school teacher (permanent NYS certification in both social studies and English) who moved out of public school into public university and then state government, I feel prepared to weep for this mistaken groupthink, argued by those who claim that because it is "not in the contract" they do not, should not have to do it -- do not have to reach out to the parents of their students-- thereby throwing aside the potential for nobility and integrity, the healthy point of view that to reach out, to communicate, to encourage communication, will solve problems even before they arise because to reach out will build emotional connections and grow intellectual investments between those so related.

But it appears the paper either a) supports the teacher-ly -- that is union -- p.o.v., or b) find this non-debate worthy of coverage as if it were wholly legitimate instead of a kind of scandal within the public education system in this state or that school system. The reporter or editor miss the point -- a point at which they could do some good for both the school system and the community at large; the teachers miss the boat; and the innocent reader -- it dismays me to believe it -- will miss the object lesson.

May we be saved because we save one another.