Reposted with the permission of the American Federation of Teachers
http://www.aft.org
Where We Stand
[Today's guest columnist is actor/activist Richard Dreyfuss, whose 
most recent film is _Mr. Holland's Opus_. The column is condensed 
from a speech Mr. Dreyfuss delivered to the AFT national convention 
on August 4.]
Finding a Way Point
Pilots, as they take off, focus their instruments on a point on the 
horizon called the "way point." You fly fine until you reach that 
point. Then, you must refocus, locate a new way point, and readjust 
your instruments to fly again with confidence.
     We are at a turning point in America. Not just because we 
approach the end of a millennium and not just because, by prevailing 
in the Cold War, we have lost the security of an external enemy. Add 
to that 30 years of unceasingly negative events, from the Kennedy 
and King assassinations to the Vietnam War, from the oil embargo to 
Watergate, all of which have created an undying suspicion toward 
government and its institutions. The moorings we had in a certain 
set of values and beliefs seem to have broken loose; we seem, for 
the first time, to be without a way point. 
     But there is a new and dangerous deal here. If we lose faith in 
our institutions, it bodes particularly ill for us because we are 
tied to our country in a unique way--we are not the French or the 
Italians, held together by geography, ancestry, and common culture. 
We are tied by the abstracts of freedom and opportunity and the 
themes expressed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our 
foods, our gods, our marriage customs--everything is various, 
different. We are connected only by those yearnings that are intangible. 
     We are about hope. And faith in our future. The future, in 
fact, has been the one constant in the history of America. John 
Quincy Adams said of those who were thinking of taking the 
extraordinary step of emigration, "They must cast off their European 
skin, never to resume it. They must look toward their posterity 
rather than backwards to their ancestors." The essence of America is 
a commitment to an unbounded future of achievable dreams.
     But now we have limited those hopes. Our kids, we truly 
believe, will have to make do with less. We have forgotten we are 
the richest nation on earth. We act as if we were poor and 
struggling; and those who have more than others are committed to 
hanging on to it. How else to explain the drumbeat of rejection for 
school budgets, health care for our people, safe bridges, enough 
parks? Our new mean-spiritedness denies the very heart and soul of 
our culture: we are about life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness; about opportunity, achievement, can-do generosity. For 
everyone. For each of us.
     Yet the *real* and greatest enemy we face, as the millennium 
draws near, is the rejection of faith in the American ideas that 
bind us. We need a new way point, and we are going to have to look 
to ourselves to find it individually and collectively. I am 
convinced we can do this, but it will take passion and work, and 
teachers know that better than anyone. 
     Sure, parents want their kids to be able to go to college and 
get a good job. But that is not enough. They want teachers to help 
their kids understand who we are and how we should express our 
character in words and actions. I believe people also understand the 
importance of a *complete* education, from math, science, and 
history to art and music, though perhaps they are not clear on 
exactly why the arts are important.  
     It is not only so a student can learn the clarinet or another 
student can take an acting lesson. It is that for hundreds of years 
we have known that teaching the arts, along with history and math 
and biology, helps to create the well-rounded mind that western 
civilization and America have been grounded on. We need that 
well-rounded mind now. For it is from creativity and imagination 
that the solutions to our political and social problems will come.
     We need to remind our kids--and ourselves--of the importance of 
where we come from. Of course we want them to learn to read and 
write, but we also have to seduce them into a love affair with the 
American idea. We have to paint a picture of republican democracy 
that is as romantic and irresistible as it really is. We have to 
teach our children our history, our mythology, our culture with 
passion, with wit, with rigor; and by doing that, we will create the 
possibility of that civic virtue that ties thinking individuals to 
their communities. 
     If we teach our kids these things, they will find their way point.
For copies of the full text, write Speech, c/o  AFT, 555 New Jersey 
Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001 or http://www.aft.org/convention/dreyfuss.htm>
Chuck Beams
cbeams@dreamscape.com
http://www.dreamscape.com/cbeams
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