Head of School Blog by Dr. Joseph Vorbach '83
When I became a member of the faculty at the Coast Guard Academy in the summer of 1995 after completing a master's degree in international relations, I was assigned to teach a one-semester course in U.S. History. For two years, I taught this course to 80-100 cadets each semester. With my colleagues, I participated in an annual process of reviewing textbooks for this course. The textbook selection process, and the practice of preparing lessons for this intensive (one colleague referred to it as "Columbus to Clinton") 13-week course, challenged me to learn quickly and in greater depth about aspects of American history that I had no expertise in. I was very comfortable with the history of U.S. foreign relations, particularly from World War I to the present. I was less familiar with late 19th century populism and the chronology of key Civil War battles. Another challenge for me was how to do a good job presenting and causing the cadets to think critically about the history of the Civil Rights movement. Even in such a compressed course, I wanted the cadets to think critically about issues and moments like the following:
1.The rights of African-Americans during the 31-year period between the abolishment of slavery with the adoption of the 13th Amendment in December of 1865 and the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that upheld state segregation laws under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
2.The rights of African-Americans during the 58-year period between the Plessy v. Ferguson decision and the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which found that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional.
3.The significance of President Truman signing on July 26, 1948 Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military.
4.The life journeys of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.
5.President Johnson's speech before a joint session of Congress in the days after the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963 that began "All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today..." and included the lines: "First, no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law..."
By 1998, I was no longer teaching the U.S. History course, so my engagements with the cadets on this subject did not include considering the service of General Colin Powell and Dr. Condoleezza Rice as Secretaries of State or the election of President Barack Obama, all milestones that would have enriched the classroom discussion.
As I write this, I am sitting in the waiting room at Koons Tysons Toyota watching ABC7 morning news coverage of both the opening of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture and the protests occurring Charlotte, N.C. One is aware of both how far we have come as a country and how far we have yet to go.
As a Catholic high school administrator, I find myself thinking regularly about questions like these:
1.How can we leverage the power of Church teaching on human dignity and the unique racial and ethnic diversity of our school community to challenge our students to be citizens who lead positive change?
2.How, by our example and our effectiveness as educators, can we leverage the innate idealism of young people and inspire continued hope, optimism, even joy in their hearts as they imagine a better future for this nation?
3.How, by our example, can we grow in our students a stronger appreciation of the power of prayer for confronting those challenges in life that seem to be the most intractable?
Even as some of what confronts us in the news each day can be discouraging, we also find in the story of the opening the new museum this weekend great evidence of hope and positive change that we can draw upon to reach new heights in our nation's story.