Presenting A Better

Example To Our Children

To the Editor:

I join Dana Brand in thanking The Bee for its intelligent editorials, and for printing letters. A forum in which to express differing opinions is what separates democracy from totalitarianism.

When I wrote my letter to The Bee concerning school trips, I was unaware that the Gettysburg trip had been canceled by the teachers. This makes the question on the Gettysburg trip moot; the teachers have the right to make the decision not to travel. I also respect and accept Dr Reed’s decision – I may disagree, but after all, the buck stops with him.

 My letter did not mention the Discovery trip, but since Janis Solheim chose to bring it into a public forum, I must reply that her letter was disingenuous. She says regarding it that there was “absolutely no agreement” among parents. On the contrary, the majority favored the trip; it was canceled because a minority did not. It was disingenuous in citing safety – why is an alternative bus trip to Boston, say, inherently safer than a bus trip to Gettysburg? It was disingenuous in bringing up cost; it has always been the policy that no child would stay home because of cost. It was disingenuous in that she concealed that she strongly opposed the trip when it was first discussed at a meeting last spring, well before the terrorist attack. I sat next to her at that meeting and listened to a very large number of objections from her, none of which had to do with terrorists. Finally, it was disingenuous in ignoring at least four substantive issues raised by The Bee’s editorial and the letters. Neither the acerbic “Give me a break!” nor the beyond-the-pale accusation that other parents are willing to “sacrifice” their children’s safety constitute a response.

 The first issue concerned the statistical safety of travel – but we Americans have consistently shown ourselves “innumerate” (illiterate vis-à-vis numbers) when it comes to understanding risk, fearing the one-in-a-million chance while blithely ignoring very real and more probable dangers.

 The second was the political question of whether we should allow a tyranny of the minority to dictate how other people live their lives – the general issue of veto power of the minority over the majority. No one attacked anyone’s freedom to stay in her house; rather it seemed reasonable to let those people who are afraid stay home, and those who are not, go.

The third substantive issue is educational; Ms Solheim’s rejoinder that parents should just take their children themselves (which they may do) is specious. Surely she doesn’t utterly misunderstand the educational nature of these trips. While any parents can take their children to Disney World, a trip with one’s intellectual peers to the Disney Institute is an entirely different matter, one that is hardly (in her words) “insignificant” – if one cannot see this, one could look all over the sky at high noon on a clear day and not see the sun.

The fourth and most important issue is the ancient ethical, political, and spiritual question, “How then shall we live?” in the face of the vicissitudes of life. Ms Solheim’s letter attacked a straw man: a position obscurely descended from one never held in the first place. No one believes we should resume “normal” life. My letter was quite specific that our lives would now be very different, more like the life of most of the world, and that that life should and could be lived with grace and spirit.

One useful exercise regarding this fourth issue might be to read Winston Churchill’s Their Finest Hour or watch the newsreel footage on Frank Capra’s film Why We Fight, part 6. These are on the Battle of Britain, that solid year during World War II when Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg. About 50,000 civilians died in the relentless bombing, building collapses, and fires. Yet they went about their work with courage and grace we can only stand in awe of, while we in America panic so much that thousands of our fellow citizens are losing their jobs, and some states’ economies risk tanking, because of hysteria.

But I suspect that not even the sterling example of the British will help many set-in-their-ways adults. When tragedy strikes the person beneath is revealed; the people who are cowering now undoubtedly lived fearful lives before September 11, and those who face the world with valor and grace now always had it in them. No one is forcing the cowerers to stop their cowering; I only hope a better example can be presented to our children, one in which reasoned arguments are answered by intelligent civil discourse, rational prudence has ascendancy over irrational fear, and spiritual fortitude rather than craven pretext rules the day.

Mary Taylor

Jeremiah Road, Sandy Hook                                        October 15, 2001