More Dawn

I have been home in Cincinnati now for more than a week, doing what I do very happily in these breaks: talking and eating. I make sure I see nephew Jack and niece Emma every day, and I catch up with old friends every chance I get. It is nearing the end of June, which also means it is time for my annual summer vacation from the blog. I have two entries left for this school year, so tune in today and tomorrow!

Last Friday I had breakfast with one of my oldest continuous friends, my friendly rival from junior high and high school, Dawn. Dawn and I met in French class in 7th grade, and except for a brief hiatus or two, we have been dear friends ever since. Our breakfasts are always fast and furious catch-ups of what has transpired, well less of the transpiring, and more about what we are feeling about what has transpired.

As I left my breakfast with Dawn, and after our pledge to see each other at least once more over the summer, I remembered a line from Henry David Thoreau that seemed apt:

“There is more dawn to come.”

And as I drove home from that Kentucky breakfast nook, the Thoreau line struck me even deeper than my desire to see my friend Dawn more over the summer. (Nothing at all against Dawn!) There was something in this line that beckoned me to think about distant KA.

When I first learned of my school in Jordan, it was from an article in The New Yorker in the fall of 2006 explaining the desire of King Abdullah II of Jordan to start a new school in his kingdom. One of the main points of the article was that he hoped to emulate the best features of his American prep school experience. Curiously, the writer did not explore what exactly that aim meant. I remember as I read the article, I wondered, what is it exactly they hoped to import to Jordan from American prep schools like Deerfield? I hadn’t attended a prep school, so I couldn’t guess from my childhood experience—indeed, from kindergarten through 12th grade I was a product of excellent Cincinnati public schools. But I have worked only in private schools in my teaching career, so I set about wondering what it is we offer…my first guess was that His Majesty hoped to cultivate the rigor he discovered in his prep school. I also hoped it would be to match the wonderfully rich relationships between teacher and student.

From time to time, over these three years, I have continued to wonder…what is it that King Abdullah hoped to borrow? Was it just from an American school, or was it from America and American sensibilities as well? Hmmmmm…

I have been wondering, as we end the third year at KA, what is it that the King wanted to emulate about his Deerfield experience? Rigor? Camaraderie?

I think it is rather something that America as a nation does better than anything else. Is it “power” or “money”? Nah, nothing of that ilk. I think it is something in our bones that compels us and that we do better than anyone. Optimism! I have traveled a great deal, and this is maybe what we do best. We kindle optimism.

Optimism in America, more than a widespread character trait, is a core tenet of a national faith: what we know to be true, how we experience the world. If stocks go up, they will continue to go up; if stocks go down, it is only a matter of time before they will regain their footing and go up once again, as is only right, what stocks must and should do. What merely appears bad will soon be revealed as good…take any current event (Iraq? According to right-leaning pundits, certainly. But I don’t mean to be partisan at all here.). Indeed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt seemed inclined to defeat the Great Depression with an ever-present smile as his sword and with the very idea that he and we could and would climb back out of that valley and resume our ascent to the very summit of human possibility. Ronald Reagan triumphed over the “malaise” of 1970s apathy and won the Cold War announcing that it was “Morning in America.” And in 2009 we witnessed the exuberance at the victory of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

But this is not merely a 20th century phenomenon…this is in our roots… Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams that “moral sense” and “justice” are not imposed by society or learned, but “innate” in each of us. Oh, the juices are flowing now—how I miss the classroom! Let’s go back farther in our American history…we might trace America’s extraordinary vision of itself to those stern Puritans who believed in this unprecedented opportunity to found an exemplary “city upon a hill,” a New Jerusalem cleansed of the catastrophic history they had left behind. If this fantastic metropolis never quite materialized, (although Ronald Reagan referenced it every chance he had) it nonetheless became our supreme goal, a beacon blazing throughout the development of a uniquely American culture. It was the promise of something greater.

In the mid-nineteenth century “more dawn” philosopher Henry David Thoreau advised his readers to build their “castles in the air” first and then “lay the foundations under them.” We sense that in Manifest Destiny a spirit to push us onward, and then Walt Whitman believed after the Civil War that a grander people would emerge. We built skyscrapers! We fought the war to end all wars! We christened forward-looking, epoch-making agendas of the 20th century: Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom,” FDR’s “New Deal,” John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America.” There was the “beautiful symphony of brotherhood” prophesied by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. and there was Woodstock—a gathering billed as “Three Days of Peace and Music.”

Our optimism endures. Our optimism inspires.

We actually think that the most recent war could and should be the last. American-style optimism hovers above setbacks. Even when we wonder if our city upon a hill is built at the bottom of a strip mine, or our castles in the air might be collapsing, and our history just a revolving door of tragedy from which there is no escape, we quickly rebound. It could be enough to make us a little anxious…that we won’t keep up with the bills, find true love, catch the dream.

So with a sigh we could rise and head out into the darkened streets, to wander, to get some air, wonder if we went wrong, where we went wrong. We could see how imperfect life is, and fear the dawn as if it were a dreaded intruder. But that’s not how we do it…we get some rest and announce, “Tomorrow is another day!”

We just don’t stay with pessimism long. Seriously, pessimism just doesn’t fly in TV commercials (“Life’s a bust! Drink Coke!”)

At any point in our shared history on this continent, we might have gotten overwhelmed with all that is wrong. At any point! Go back and read about the crises during the Revolution. Go back and read about the disasters of the 1790s, our first decade as a nation. But Americans choose to savor the words and message of Thoreau who continued the thought about dawn:

“There is more dawn to come. The sun is but a morning star.”

But as much as I love all this history talk, there are also contemporary pop-cultural examples of how Americans bathe in optimism (yes, the cynics may say we “manufacture” it, but hey, we do that better than anyone too!). On Saturday I went with Emma and Jack to see the movie Toy Story 3. To be honest, I hadn’t seen the other two installments, so Saturday morning I got caught up to speed on the franchise with some of their VHS tapes.

Have you seen this movie yet? What a triumph of the digital process, and of narrative and characterization…but what moved me so much was that patented American-style optimism from the story. Without giving anything away, the message of this summer movie conveyed a veritable hope in Imagination. The movie spins the hope that with our youth we may reclaim creativity and curiosity and wonder. And solve problems! That a summer movie could re-affirm for me such monumental, and yet fragile tenets, well, our optimism is quite a feat.

So as I catch up with friends like Debbie and Tracy and Kevin and Doris and Shelley and more to come, I can savor the feats and hopes of what we do at KA. Vacation is good for the soul, and for reflection. Of course there are problems and difficulties at this three-year old school, but maybe it will be that American optimism of Thoreau and Pixar that triumphs and cultivates creativity and curiosity and wonder and problem solving in the youth of this school. Maybe it is that fuel of optimism that will be our best import.