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Nephew of Homophobic Member of Congress Defends Gay Marriage

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2022 //
21

When Congress debated whether to pass a statute protecting gay marriage, Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler tearfully pleaded with her colleagues in the House of Representatives to vote against it. Every Democrat and 39 Republicans voted for it, and Rep. Hartzler was distraught.

Her nephew, Andrew Hartzler, disagreed with her vote. He is gay. He grew up in a strict conservative household. He told his parents he was gay when he was 14, and they sent him to conversion therapy. When he finished high school, his parents insisted that he attend Oral Roberts University, thinking that he would not encounter any gay students. They were wrong. More conversion therapy.

He was interviewed on MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets. Watch him tell his story.

Categories Bias, Elections, Love, Missouri

A Beautiful Soul Has Left Us

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2022 //
9

I read this obituary in the Boston Globe, and I found myself wishing that more of us could be like Sabina. By her measure, most of us fall short. But let us honor the incredible example she set. She defines the term “force of nature.”

During two decades as an activist, Sabina Carlson Robillard became a significant leader in humanitarian relief efforts as she insisted that the voices of those being assisted should always be the most prominent in every discussion.

“While you’re listening to me, there are 1.5 million conversations happening on the ground, and I’m here to ask you all how we’re listening to them,” she said at a 2010 conference in Boston about her work in Haiti earlier that year after an earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.

She had turned 22 several weeks before that speech and was a seasoned activist. Years earlier in middle school, she began participating in protests and “was already thinking deeply about people who were suffering throughout the world,” said her father, Ken Carlson.

After being diagnosed with clear cell sarcoma four years ago while she was pregnant, Ms. Robillard, who lived in Cambridge, stayed busier than most of her healthiest colleagues.

She worked as a consultant and an operations officer with humanitarian nonprofits, and helped raise her daughter and stepdaughter while being treated for cancer. Ms. Robillard even texted her academic adviser from her Massachusetts General Hospital room the day before she died on Nov. 16, at age 34, to schedule a meeting a few days later with her Tufts doctoral advisory committee.

“In an unassuming way, she changed the course of how lots of money and people engaged in Haiti,” said her friend Jess Laporte of Waterbury, Vt., a Haitian-American climate and racial justice activist who works with nonprofits.

She worked as a consultant and an operations officer with humanitarian nonprofits, and helped raise her daughter and stepdaughter while being treated for cancer. Ms. Robillard even texted her academic adviser from her Massachusetts General Hospital room the day before she died on Nov. 16, at age 34, to schedule a meeting a few days later with her Tufts doctoral advisory committee.

“In an unassuming way, she changed the course of how lots of money and people engaged in Haiti,” said her friend Jess Laporte of Waterbury, Vt., a Haitian-American climate and racial justice activist who works with nonprofits.

Dan Maxwell, a Tufts University professor who was Ms. Robillard’s academic adviser, first met her when she was a Tufts sophomore.

“She was already well known as a force of nature on campus when she was 18 or 19 years old,” he said.

And though more recently she was a doctoral student, he said, “she was also like a colleague, and in many ways a leader the rest of us followed.”

Ms. Robillard was the lead author for a 2021 report, prepared with Teddy Atim and Maxwell, which called on international relief organizations to adopt a “localization” approach — letting local groups and individuals participate in planning and administration, rather than excluding them, as so often was done in the past.

In October, the US Agency for International Development issued a draft “Policy for Localization of Humanitarian Assistance” that cited the Tufts report and drew upon its findings.

“I was certainly happy to see her live long enough to see that kind of high-level validation of her work,” said Maxwell, who added that Ms. Robillard was defined by her sense of certainty in the field and in her writing.

“She had a North Star,” he said. “She knew where she was going, she knew what was right. While she didn’t force people to agree with her, she could be pretty insistent about what was right and what was wrong.”

The correct approach, she often said, was to listen instead of impose an outsider’s view.

After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, “what I saw firsthand was how much Haitians wanted to have their voices heard in the response,” Ms. Robillard wrote for the website of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, an international nonprofit based in Cambridge for which she worked.

Early on, Ms. Robillard channeled her determination into helping others.

“Sabina was always defined by a tremendous sense of empathy,” her father said. “Her empathy was her sixth sense. She always thought of others before herself, even when she was a very, very young child.”

She also was a multi-instrument musician, an accomplished slam poet, and a leader of Amnesty International and gay-straight alliance groups while in high school.

Initially intending to study creative writing at Tufts, Ms. Robillard was soon involved with humanitarian work, spending months away from the university in 2009 to work as an intern with refugees in South Sudan.

She graduated the following year with a bachelor’s degree in community health and peace and justice studies, and subsequently received a master’s in applied community change and peace building. Tufts later honored Ms. Robillard for her humanitarian work.

For the past dozen years, she worked for nonprofits and aid groups including the International Organization for Migration. She was part of the IOM’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea several years ago, and its response to a cholera outbreak in Haiti.

Fluency in French and Haitian Creole made her particularly effective in Haiti, where she had lived in Cite Soleil, a crowded, impoverished part of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. And she used her language skills to elevate the voices of those who lived in Haiti.

A presentation at her memorial service featured her quote: “Why isn’t localized humanitarian aid focused on letting communities determine and lead the work in building their own future?”

Among those she met in Haiti was Louino Robillard, a community leader known as Robi, whom she married in Port-au-Prince in December 2012, and with whom she collaborated.

With marriage came additional roles as stepmother to his daughter, Dayana Robillard, and parent to the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Anacaona.

Discoloration under Ms. Robillard’s left eye, initially thought to be benign, appeared in 2017. While she was pregnant the following year, tests showed it was a malignant tumor, and the cancer later spread to her lungs.

Continuing to work for four years, even during her final full day alive, “Sabina wrote Ana e-mails over the last four years — 356 e-mails, knowing she wasn’t going to be around,” her mother said.

In addition to her parents, husband, stepdaughter, and daughter, all of Cambridge, and her brother, Ms. Robillard leaves her maternal grandmother, Luba Lepidus of Somerville.

Ms. Robillard’s husband will bring her ashes to Pak Nan Ginen, a park and reforestation project they cofounded in Saint-Raphael, Haiti, where he plans to build a memorial. Because Haiti is severely deforested, “she wished to use her ashes as soil to plant trees,” he said.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Ethics, Goodness, Love

Happy New Year to Y’All!!

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2022 //
10

Here is a message to you and all my friends!

Be happy!

Be kind to people of different religions as well as those who have no religious beliefs!

Welcome the stranger!

Open your hearts!

Banish cruelty, hatred, and bigotry!

Save some time to laugh every day, even to laugh at yourself!

Happy New Year!

Categories Humor, Justice, Love, Personal

Chris de Vinck: What My Mother Taught Me

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2022 //
6

Christopher de Vinck taught English in New Jersey for many years and lives there now.

The following lovely piece appeared in The Dallas Morning News today:

Time ran out. My mother was ravished with arthritis, often tired, but always filled with optimism and joy.

She read The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times. She was an author of many books. (Her next collection of poems Journey to the Morning Light will be published by Paraclete Press in September.)

My mother continued to write every day. She had just finished reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, the extraordinary novel written by Jung Chang.

Time ran out. My mother was 99 years old and said one afternoon a few months ago “Always keep in mind the secret name of beauty.”

My mother remembered that a few hours before I was born she was baking a peach pie. She was my first teacher: introducing me to the color of the autumn leaves, and reading aloud Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We collected wild flowers together in the spring. In grade school my mother gave me Kenneth Grahame’s book The Wind in the Willows. In middle school my mother placed on my pillow Sterling North’s book, Rascal. In high school she introduced me to the books of Loren Eiseley and William Carlos Williams. When I met a girl, my mother gave me her engagement ring to pass along to my wife of 45 years.

My mother endured Nazi occupation in Belgium for four years, nearly died in Dunkirk bombing raids, raised six children here in American…including my brother Oliver who was born with no intellect, was blind, mute, unable to chew.

Time ran out.

“Day by day, we cross over into the future,” my mother wrote in a poem. My mother is buried beside my father in a small Benedictine cemetery in Weston, Vermont.

When I visited my mother at the house where I grew up we sometimes sat on the terrace just outside her bedroom. In spring the wisteria dripped those beautiful purple flowers. In the fall the green leaves protect us. Often a chipmunk joined us on the terrace as my mother and I reminisced about weddings, vacations and peach pie.

“This terrace is a fragment of paradise,” my mother said as the brave chipmunk scurried up beside her chair. As she leaned over, the chipmunk sat up and gently took the peanut from my mother’s hand. A blue jay swooped down from the pine tree and grabbed a peanut that my mother had tossed onto the terrace floor.

We laughed at the quick chipmunk. We talked about the sorrows in the news and about the deer she saw sleeping in the yard at the edge of the woods. We even spoke about God.

“Isn’t it lovely that we are here, at ease, loving the world?”

We are living in a world that is being ravished with war, fires, and hurricanes, political upheavals, hunger, violence that is loose upon the world. It has always been so. But these things are news because they are stains that attempt to mar the beauty of our souls my mother would say. Goodness isn’t news because it is so common.

On the terrace, as my mother fed her chipmunk, she looked up at me and said “You don’t think of it, Christopher, but far ahead yet closer than a heartbeat something immense, wild, holy grabs you and won’t let go.”

Yes, time ran out. My mother’s heart gave up in December. Flowers perish, trees shed their leaves, and fields shrivel into brown stalks and frozen earth.

As my mother and I slowly walked back into her bedroom, as we took our last steps off the terrace arm in arm she looked up and said, “We can always return to a life of simplicity and peace.”

My mother was 99 years old and time ran out. She saw my sadness and then with a sigh and smile as she struggled back onto her bedroom chair she whispered “Christopher, we do not die forever.”

Happy Mother’s Day.

Christopher de Vinck’s latest novels are “Ashes,” (HarperCollins) and “Mr. Nicholas” (Paraclete Press).

Categories Character, Childhood, Goodness, Love

David R. Taylor: “Anti-Abortion” Is Not “Pro-Life”

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2022 //
2

Retired Texas educator David R. Taylor reminds his readers that to be anti-abortion is not the same thing as being pro-life.

Those who are actually pro-life treasure each child after they are born by making sure they have good nutrition, good healthcare, good public schools, and a secure home.

In Texas, the anti-abortion forces lose interest in children as soon as they are born.

The Governor, Greg Abbott, the Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the two senators demonstrated after the Uvalde massacre of School children that they were sorry as could be, offered lots of thoughts and prayers to bereaved families, but would do nothing whatever to restrict the sale or possession of military-grade weapons to civilians. The 18-year-old killer in Uvalde bought two AR15s on his 18th birthday. The AR15 is not for hunting. It’s for killing. Anyone who enables killers to have easy access to military-style weapons is not pro-life. They are pro-death.

Categories Childhood, Early Childhood Education, Equity, Health, Justice, Love

A Beautiful Christmas Story

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2021 //
4

Every once in a while, I read a story that is so moving that I have tears in my eyes as I read it. This is one of them. It appeared in The Boston Globe. I know I’m posting too many words (the legal limit is 300 words). I hope the editors at the Globe will forgive me. If they object, I will condense or delete the post.

Just in time for Christmas, a special homecoming 

Yarielis Paulino-Pepin was born into the pandemic with a heart defect and a rare genetic disorder. Now, for the first time in her life, the 17-month-old girl is leaving the hospital to live at home

By Amanda Milkovits Globe Staff,Updated December 24, 2021, 6:37 p.m.

For all 17 months of her life, Yarielis Paulino-Pepin has only known the warm nest of a hospital room, where gentle lullabies tinkle amid the hum, swish, and beeping of machines keeping her alive.

She was born into the pandemic with a heart defect and a rare genetic disorder that left her so weak, sick, and limp that she was unable to breathe or swallow. It was months before her parents heard her cry. She has never felt the wind ruffle her dark, curly hair. She has never felt a raindrop, heard birds in the trees, or gazed up at the moon. Her siblings have never been able to cuddle her.

But now, Yarielis is going home.

It is the day her parents have waited for, the day Yarielis would leave Franciscan Children’s Hospital in Brighton. When she hears her parents calling her name, Yarielis drums her chubby legs on the mattress of her crib. She wriggles in her onesie and rolls over, lifting her head, her face turning from her father, Danny Paulino, to her mother, Aris Pepin. She sticks her tongue out and grins.

“Hello, Daddy’s here!”

“Who’s here? Mama! Did you miss Mami?”

The couple swoop in and lower the sides of the crib, reaching past tubes and monitors to kiss her and tickle her cheeks.

Boston Children’s Hospital saved Yarielis’s life and diagnosed her condition, performing open heart surgery and installing tracheostomy and gastrostomy tubes. Then, for more than a year, the medical staff at Franciscan Children’s gave Yarielis every type of early intervention and therapy available.

Through it all, her parents spent every day on the road back and forth between their home in Providence and the hospitals in Boston, juggling care of four other children in their blended family. Both worked for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority but were unable to continue; keeping their family strong through the distance and uncertainty became an all-consuming, full-time job. Their older children wondered if they’d ever meet their baby sister, as COVID restrictions prevented them from visiting her in the hospital.

Months ago, when it seemed impossible, her mother made a wish for Yarielis to be home for Christmas. Then, the little girl began to gain strength. The nurses at Franciscan saw her happy and loving personality begin to blossom.

On Wednesday, a few days before Christmas, her mother’s wish came true.

Her pregnancy had gone so well. And then, at 36 weeks, Aris said, her doctor diagnosed her with polyhydramnios, an excessive accumulation of amniotic fluid, and determined the baby had an abnormal heart.

A few days later, on July 20, 2020, Aris gave birth to Yarielis. She could barely breathe. Yarielis was immediately intubated and rushed to Boston Children’s.

When Aris and Danny finally saw Yarielis again, her tiny 6-pound, 2-ounce body was under a tangle of tubes and wires, her small face half-hidden by the intubation.

No one knew why Yarielis was sick. Her parents were distraught. Aris sought solace at the hospital chapel, praying for her daughter and begging forgiveness for whatever she might have done to cause her baby to be sick. “I said, ‘sorry’ to God a thousand times, maybe I did something bad in my life,” Aris said.

It was no one’s fault. After extensive genetic testing, Yarielis was diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that affects many different organ systems.

The name comes from the distinct appearance of people with the disorder, as if they are wearing makeup used by actors in Japanese kabuki theater, which emphasizes wide-set eyes, highly arched eyebrows, a small jaw, and a flattened nose. The disorder delays growth and causes a broad spectrum of intellectual disabilities or delays, heart problems, low muscle tone, difficulty swallowing, and immune deficiency.

Dr. Olaf Bodamer, director of the Roya Kabuki Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, reassured Aris and Danny. This is not typically an inherited disorder: it is caused by a spontaneous change during pregnancy that affects about 1 in 32,000 births worldwide.

The genetic condition is nearly nonexistent in people of Caribbean descent, such Yarielis’s parents, who are Dominican. While there are 500 to 600 people diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome in the United States, Bodamer said there could be more who have not undergone genetic testing.RELATED: Facial recognition zeroes in on genetic disorders

While there is no cure for Kabuki Syndrome, children can show development over time, and there is hope for drug therapies on the horizon that could help improve learning and overall development of muscle tone, Bodamer said.

Yarielis happened to be in a place where her genetic disorder was recognized and where a team of specialists could help her family care for her.

The National Organization for Rare Disorders, or NORD, recently designated Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital as one of its Rare Disease Centers of Excellence, making them part of a small network of cutting-edge facilities that offer specialized care and disease management for people living with rare diseases.

While patients with Kabuki typically do not require 24-hour care, Yarielis has a more extreme case, Bodamer said.

She was diagnosed with a critical congenital heart defect called tetralogy of Fallot, and needed open heart surgery when she was a month old. Constantly on a ventilator, she received a tracheotomy at two months old. She has eye abnormalities known as coloboma; they don’t know yet what she can see.

Over time, Yarielis has begun to gain strength. The doctors have told her parents that her heart is working well and that the tracheostomy will not be permanent. It is giving her time to get strong enough to breathe on her own.

Her parents call her their “Kabuki warrior.” And they turned to each other to help her fight.

“It was heartbreaking at the beginning,” Aris said, “but it’s a process.”

“We pray together every night. We both get on our knees right before bed and hold hands,” Danny said. “And we talk to God and say, ‘Give us strength.’ ”

Aris and Danny sought out other families, to learn what was ahead for them and their daughter. They found people on Facebook, where they could talk about medications and therapies, and how their children were progressing.

Aris also used her TikTok channel, @yourrealfantasy, to document Yarielis’s journey with photos and videos, hoping to inspire other families of children with special needs. She wanted people to see that children like Yarielis can be happy and loved; her followers grew to more than 250,000.

But some commenters have been cruel. “I’ve seen many people telling me on social media, ‘Why do you expose your daughter? You shouldn’t expose your daughter. How can you enjoy life exposing your daughter when she’s suffering?’ ” Aris said. “She’s not suffering. I just explain to people that I don’t need to hide my daughter just because she’s disabled. I’m very proud of my daughter.”

Later, alone with Yarielis during one of their last nights at Franciscan Children’s, Danny admitted his fears.

Here, all Yarielis has ever known is love and acceptance. But the world, as beautiful as it can be, is also a hard place, he said. Will other people see that she is lovable? Will she be bullied or rejected?

“We bring them into the world, you know, they don’t ask to be born. So it’s our responsibility to raise these children and care for them, no matter what age they are,” Danny said. “You know how cruel this world is, but it’s your job to protect them and take away all the negativity and always surround them with a positive attitude.”

Staff members at Franciscan Children’s Hospital lined the hallways and held a bubble parade for Yarielis as she was discharged from the hospital and headed home.

Staff members at Franciscan Children’s Hospital lined the hallways and held a bubble parade for Yarielis as she was discharged from the hospital and headed home. JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

Before Yarielis could go home, the staff at Franciscan Children’s taught Danny and Aris every step of her care — how to use the ventilators, the oxygen tanks, the monitors; how to care for the tracheotomy and gastrostomy; how to administer her medication and milk around the clock and trouble-shoot alarms.

Finally, each parent had to stay at the hospital for 48 hours, solo, to show that they could handle everything Yarielis could need.

They barely slept, but they passed the test. “When you are keeping your baby alive, you will do anything,” Danny said.

As they packed up the room, Danny and Aris took final instructions from their case manager, social worker, and nurses. They signed discharge papers.

Aris was suddenly overcome. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long,” she says. “This is tears of happiness.”

She dressed Yarielis in a pink-and-white sweater with a matching hat and boots. She cut the toe of the leggings to fit the monitor that tracks Yarielis’s heart and oxygen, and covered her in a pink-and-white quilt handmade by her grandmother.

Nurse practitioner Stephanie Hopkins cuddled Yarielis for the last time. “Her parents are as ready as they can be,” Hopkins said. “It’s exciting to think of her at home with her siblings and to see her home for the holidays with her family, something that people take for granted.”

The baby smacked her lips, her way of blowing kisses. “Are you going to miss everybody?” Aris asked her.

As the EMTs wheeled Yarielis out of her room, nurses and staff cheered, waving bubble wands in the hospital’s traditional “bubble parade” for children who are discharged. Yarielis passed by with her right hand raised like she was the queen of England.

“God bless everyone,” Danny said to every person he passed. “Thank you for everything you guys did.”

Jasleen Pepin, 5, jumped up and down as she spotted the ambulance carrying her baby sister coming down the street.

Jasleen Pepin, 5, jumped up and down as she spotted the ambulance carrying her baby sister coming down the street.JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

Yarielis’s uncle, Abel Pepin, and her brothers Dionyanny Paulino,17, and Jossem Peña-Pepin, 13, had just finished taping balloons and a welcome banner across their front porch when the ambulance from Boston pulled up to their house in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Providence.

Yariel Paulino-Pepin, 3, barely waited for the EMTs to open the ambulance doors before he bounded inside. Jasleen Pepin, 5, danced, waiting to see her sister, and shouted: “She’s so cuuuute!”

Mother and child emerged carefully from the ambulance, accompanied by EMTs carrying medical equipment. Aris carried Yarielis up the steps and into the house, and placed her into the large gray crib that had been ready since before she was born.

Large plastic flowers and letters spelling “Princess Yarielis” decorated the wall over her crib in the living room. The ventilators, IV stands, oxygen tanks, shelves of medical supplies, a shopping bag filled with medication, and a new refrigerator to store them — everything was ready for the littlest child.

“Welcome home, princess,” Aris said.

Then, as Aris and Danny bustled about with the medical machines under the supervision of a respiratory therapist, the two younger siblings clung to the crib railings to get as close as possible to their baby sister.

They touched her nose and her chubby hands, showed her toys, and tried to make her smile. They squealed when she grabbed their hands and kicked the crib railing. But, when Yarielis suddenly turned red, opening her mouth in a silent, tearful yowl, the children screamed for their mother to help her.

Aris calmly dealt with the ventilator alarm and suctioned Yarielis, who quieted. The children crept back to the crib railings again. They plinked on a toy xylophone, mimicking the sound of her alarms. They took turns with their mother’s stethoscope and listened to each other’s hearts.

All they had known of Yarielis were photos and videos, and their parents’ explanations about the baby’s illness. Boston Children’s Hospital had produced a special book for them about Yarielis and her condition. Now, here she was, and no matter how many times their parents and older siblings pulled them away, the two children could not resist her. They were not afraid. They were enthralled.

At last, when the wires and tubes were untangled, the machines were humming, the first round of medication successfully administered, when they’d changed her diaper and removed her warm sweater, Aris and Danny paused at the crib and took in the sight of their youngest daughter. Yariel joined them.

Propped up against a curved pillow, Yarielis gazed up at them. She was in her own home, with her family, for the first time in her life.

They don’t know what’s ahead for Yarielis, but right now, for the first time in 17 months, they are all together.

“You know that you are home, baby,” Aris cooed to her baby daughter, who smiled back. “You know that you are home.”

Aris talked to Yarielis as Yariel squeezed in to get a better look at his baby sister. Danny spoke to the respiratory therapist who had come to oversee the setup.

Aris talked to Yarielis as Yariel squeezed in to get a better look at his baby sister. Danny spoke to the respiratory therapist who had come to oversee the setup.JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

Categories Courage, Goodness, Love

An Educator Who Changed Lives: Irene B. West

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2021 //
4

At a time when teachers are burned out and leaving, when teacher shortages are growing, it’s useful to learn about a beloved educator who inspired many children, including her own. And, as it happens, she was the mother of philosopher Cornel West.

Journalist Seth Sandronsky writes about Irene B. West here:

Irene B. West was a trailblazer on many levels. As Elk Grove’s first Black classroom educator in what was a rural community, she enjoyed a long career as a teacher and principal.

The Elk Grove Unified School District named an elementary school after her in 2002. West died in April at age 88…

The school now showcases a stunning memorial mural of West and her favorite saying: “If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star. It isn’t by size that you win or you fail, be the best of whatever you are.”

Categories Hope, Love, Teachers and Teaching

“We Found a Baby on the Subway”–A Lovely Story

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2021 //
13

This is a beautiful story. It happened in New York City. A man was rushing to have dinner with his new friend when he saw what looked like a doll on the ground in the subway. It was wrapped in an old sweat shirt. But it wasn’t a doll, it was a baby who had been abandoned. You will enjoy reading this. You might even cry. It’s good to be reminded of the goodness in the world.

Categories Love

A Wonderful Typo! We Need Common CARE Standards!

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2021 //
23

Recently Tom Ultican responded to something I posted on Twitter.

His response contained a typo.

He meant to write “Common Core Standards,” but mistakenly wrote “Common Care Standards.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our schools had “Common Care Standards,” in which we acknowledged our responsibility to care about students?

The standards might read like this:

All children shall have access to high quality preschool.

All children should have time to play every day, between classes and after school.

All children should have three nutritious meals every day.

All children should see a school nurse whenever they don’t feel well.

All children should be checked by a doctor and dentist annually.

All children should have access to a well-stocked library.

All children should have a safe place to live.

All children should have the arts as part of their daily schedule.

All children should have a school curriculum that includes not only reading and mathematics, but civics and history, science, literature, and foreign language.

Do you have anything to add to the Common Care Standards?

Categories Arts Education, Common Core, Education Reform, Health, Joy, Love, Poverty

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: The Drum Major Instinct

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2021 //
21

Today is a national holiday in which we remember the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and celebrate his legacy of justice, equality, and peace. To mark this date, I selected one of his memorable speeches. The Drum Major Instinct can lead one to be cruel, oppressive, greedy, and snobbish. But, rightly understood, it can lead one to serve others and to do good. This speech is appropriate for this moment in our national life. Like all classics, it fits the times and explains what we see before us.

Dr. King said on February 4, 1968:

This morning I would like to use as a subject from which to preach: “The Drum Major Instinct.” “The Drum Major Instinct.” And our text for the morning is taken from a very familiar passage in the tenth chapter as recorded by Saint Mark. Beginning with the thirty-fifth verse of that chapter, we read these words: “And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came unto him saying, ‘Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire.’ And he said unto them, ‘What would ye that I should do for you?’ And they said unto him, ‘Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.’ But Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye know not what ye ask: Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ And they said unto him, ‘We can.’ And Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.’” And then Jesus goes on toward the end of that passage to say, “But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”

The setting is clear. James and John are making a specific request of the master. They had dreamed, as most of the Hebrews dreamed, of a coming king of Israel who would set Jerusalem free and establish his kingdom on Mount Zion, and in righteousness rule the world. And they thought of Jesus as this kind of king. And they were thinking of that day when Jesus would reign supreme as this new king of Israel. And they were saying, “Now when you establish your kingdom, let one of us sit on the right hand and the other on the left hand of your throne.”

Now very quickly, we would automatically condemn James and John, and we would say they were selfish. Why would they make such a selfish request? But before we condemn them too quickly, let us look calmly and honestly at ourselves, and we will discover that we too have those same basic desires for recognition, for importance. That same desire for attention, that same desire to be first. Of course, the other disciples got mad with James and John, and you could understand why, but we must understand that we have some of the same James and John qualities. And there is deep down within all of us an instinct. It’s a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life.

And so before we condemn them, let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. Alfred Adler, the great psychoanalyst, contends that this is the dominant impulse. Sigmund Freud used to contend that sex was the dominant impulse, and Adler came with a new argument saying that this quest for recognition, this desire for attention, this desire for distinction is the basic impulse, the basic drive of human life, this drum major instinct.

And you know, we begin early to ask life to put us first. Our first cry as a baby was a bid for attention. And all through childhood the drum major impulse or instinct is a major obsession. Children ask life to grant them first place. They are a little bundle of ego. And they have innately the drum major impulse or the drum major instinct.

Now in adult life, we still have it, and we really never get by it. We like to do something good. And you know, we like to be praised for it. Now if you don’t believe that, you just go on living life, and you will discover very soon that you like to be praised. Everybody likes it, as a matter of fact. And somehow this warm glow we feel when we are praised or when our name is in print is something of the vitamin A to our ego. Nobody is unhappy when they are praised, even if they know they don’t deserve it and even if they don’t believe it. The only unhappy people about praise is when that praise is going too much toward somebody else. (That’s right) But everybody likes to be praised because of this real drum major instinct.

Now the presence of the drum major instinct is why so many people are “joiners.” You know, there are some people who just join everything. And it’s really a quest for attention and recognition and importance. And they get names that give them that impression. So you get your groups, and they become the “Grand Patron,” and the little fellow who is henpecked at home needs a chance to be the “Most Worthy of the Most Worthy” of something. It is the drum major impulse and longing that runs the gamut of human life. And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in.

Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. (Make it plain) In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff. (Yes) That’s the way the advertisers do it.

I got a letter the other day, and it was a new magazine coming out. And it opened up, “Dear Dr. King: As you know, you are on many mailing lists. And you are categorized as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you will want to read what I have to say.” Of course I did. After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it. [laughter]

But very seriously, it goes through life; the drum major instinct is real. (Yes) And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. (Make it plain)It’s nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? (Amen) [laughter] You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. (Make it plain) But it feeds a repressed ego.

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn’t cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That’s just good economics. And if it’s a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it’s often inconvenient. But so often, haven’t you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. [laughter] That’s a fact.

Now the economists also say that your house shouldn’t cost—if you’re buying a house, it shouldn’t cost more than twice your income. That’s based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So, if you have an income of five thousand dollars, it’s kind of difficult in this society. But say it’s a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn’t cost much more than twenty thousand. Well, I’ve seen folk making ten thousand dollars, living in a forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar house. And you know they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days.

But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary’s coat. And I got to drive this car because it’s something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor’s car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don’t know where he’s going to end up if he’s going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.

There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. (Make it plain) And that’s where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn’t harnessed, it causes one’s personality to become distorted. I guess that’s the most damaging aspect of it: what it does to the personality. If it isn’t harnessed, you will end up day in and day out trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting. Have you ever heard people that—you know, and I’m sure you’ve met them—that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves. (Amen) And they just boast and boast and boast, and that’s the person who has not harnessed the drum major instinct.

And then it does other things to the personality. It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) There are some people who are influence peddlers. And in their attempt to deal with the drum major instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people. (Yeah, Make it plain) And if you’re not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don’t really know. (Amen) They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this-and-that. That happens to people.

And the other thing is that it causes one to engage ultimately in activities that are merely used to get attention. Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum major instinct. They don’t feel that they are getting enough attention through the normal channels of social behavior, and so they turn to anti-social behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel important. (Yeah) And so they get that gun, and before they know it they robbed a bank in a quest for recognition, in a quest for importance.

And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails to harness this instinct, (Glory to God) he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself up. (Amen) And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people, because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up. (Make it plain) And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

Now the other problem is, when you don’t harness the drum major instinct—this uncontrolled aspect of it—is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. (Make it plain) And you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I’m in a fraternity; I’m in two or three—for sororities and all of these, I’m not talking against them. I’m saying it’s the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive. And that’s fulfilling something, you know—that I’m in this fraternity, and it’s the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can’t get in this fraternity. So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.

And you know, that can happen with the church; I know churches get in that bind sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) I’ve been to churches, you know, and they say, “We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church.” And that’s fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers—they ought to be in church. But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don’t count. (Amen)

And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he’s a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he’s a Ph.D. (Yes) The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he’s a lawyer. And any church that violates the “whosoever will, let him come” doctrine is a dead, cold church, (Yes) and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

When the church is true to its nature, (Whoo) it says, “Whosoever will, let him come.” (Yes) And it does not supposed to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It’s the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior. (Yes, sir) And a recognition grows out of this—that all men are brothers because they are children (Yes) of a common father.

The drum major instinct can lead to exclusivism in one’s thinking and can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he’s a little better than that person who doesn’t have it. Or because he has some economic security, that he’s a little better than that person who doesn’t have it. And that’s the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.

Now the other thing is, that it leads to tragic—and we’ve seen it happen so often—tragic race prejudice. Many who have written about this problem—Lillian Smith used to say it beautifully in some of her books. And she would say it to the point of getting men and women to see the source of the problem. Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the drum major instinct? A need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel that they are first, and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first. (Make it plain, today, ‘cause I’m against it, so help me God) And they have said over and over again in ways that we see with our own eyes. In fact, not too long ago, a man down in Mississippi said that God was a charter member of the White Citizens Council. And so God being the charter member means that everybody who’s in that has a kind of divinity, a kind of superiority. And think of what has happened in history as a result of this perverted use of the drum major instinct. It has led to the most tragic prejudice, the most tragic expressions of man’s inhumanity to man.

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I’m in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

Now that’s a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out. (Amen)

And not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn’t happen to stop this trend, I’m sorely afraid that we won’t be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. (Yeah) If somebody doesn’t bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody’s going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don’t let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. (Amen) They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.” (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, “Don’t play with me.” (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, “Don’t play with me, Israel. Don’t play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I’m God. And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.

But let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying. What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It’s very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, “You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?”

But that isn’t what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, “Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you’re going to be my disciple, you must be.” But he reordered priorities. And he said, “Yes, don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.”

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, “Now brethren, I can’t give you greatness. And really, I can’t make you first.” This is what Jesus said to James and John. “You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared.” (Amen)

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That’s a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I’m talking about as I go down the way (Yeah) because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, (Yes, sir) the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. (Amen) Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn’t have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. (Yes) He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. (Glory to God) He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. (Amen) One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. (Lord help him) When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together (Yes) have not affected the life of man on this earth (Amen) as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus) But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, “He’s King of Kings.” (Yes) And again I can hear somebody saying, “He’s Lord of Lords.” Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, “In Christ there is no East nor West.” (Yes) And then they go on and talk about, “In Him there’s no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world.” He didn’t have anything. (Amen) He just went around serving and doing good.

This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. (Amen) It’s the only way in.

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that’s all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.Source: 

MLKEC, Martin Luther King, Jr. Estate Collection, In Private Hands.

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