The PR Problem

Most people don’t believe this, but the first job I ever had was as a weekly columnist at a local newspaper. I was 10. I wrote about how kids needed to read more and how year-round school was a bad idea because kids needed a break from meddlesome teachers. The column stopped after a few months, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was “too controversial.” I’d become a PR problem for the middle school I was attending and they wanted it stopped. That was the one and only time I was ever in the principal’s office for disciplinary reasons.

Recently, I’ve been accused of a similar crime. A fellow American told me I was “giving our country a bad name.” I wasn’t doing anything culturally taboo or unseemly. No naked protests or flag burning. I didn’t even assume was I was superior because I’m an American. No, my sin was telling stories, true stories, about my years as a teacher in the States.

There’s a lot that’s completely wonderful about the American school system. Special education, for example, is light-years ahead of anything Spain has considered yet. And the American focus on critical thinking? Totally foreign to the rote memorization method that rules here. Still, I can’t help it that some of my American students thought Spain and Mexico were the same place. I did my best to disabuse them of the notion, but there are some pretty dense individuals in the public school system. Likewise, the girl who thought California was the capitol of the US wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least she was still in school and not selling her body on the streets.

Will I stop telling people stories about my past life as a teacher in the trenches of LA and Salt Lake? Probably not. But am I growing to more fully appreciate the good things about the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yep. You could say that.