Hope reigns eternal

Thinking about grass roots activism for a person who is, on one hand trained to challenge everything, and on the other, at heart, extremely non-confrontational, presents a conundrum.

I've been trying to deal with this paradox in myself, indeed this oxymoronic state that leaves some of the most qualified people with their hands bound behind their backs...

As students and teachers how can we make a difference, seeing that we already know that this war is just plain wrong, and we have known it since long before it started...

This article proposes an interesting take on our role as educators... Ok, so I am not ready to throw my body down in front of tanks or take tear gas in the face... maybe that makes me a hypocrite (or just a mother). But maybe, just maybe, there are other ways to get things done.

And it is true, that these children that are being agressively recruited into the military are generally those with the fewest alternatives for higher education or upward mobility. Perhaps military is just another face of the world's oldest profession, prostitution of one's body (and lamentably sometimes mind) for lack of recourse.

With renewed faith in my profession, I am headed back to the classroom next week without fear of reprisal for expressing my beliefs. After all, what is job security when we compare our luck to those in, say, Fallujah?