A letter to Parents & Teachers

Dear Parents and Teachers,

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." Anne Frank - July 15, 1944

Her voice was uncontainable. From an attic, as the lights of her captive world flickered and conceded darkness, she preserved her single, beautiful perspective. Its worth is irrefutable, though simple, told through the trembling hand of a fourteen-year-old girl. We would not deny that though her journal lacked the insights of scholars or the repudiation of the Gestapo, it remains in fact an invaluable window into her era.

In our era, we often walk with trepidation into understanding the confusing and heartbreaking world. We shy from topics that challenge our beliefs and burden our confidence. Our sources must be objective, our teachers non-committal, our news balanced. We grasp for “both sides of the story” during minute segments afforded in clipped articles and Katie Couric’s nightly world debriefing.

If a young Rwandan had penned Anne’s diary during that country’s genocide, would her words not possess the same merit? If it had been written by Yolanda King, would we demand of those pages the white voices of Jim Crowe’s South lest her journal be deemed unbalanced and her point of view tainted?

Anne Frank offered the perspective she was capable of providing, her own. Through her words we are gifted the history, love and hope of an individual person. We do not search for “the other side” because her poetry inspires in us the understanding that there were in fact millions of perspectives all around her, striving, struggling, being extinguished. Her life could not be inscribed upon a side of a coin, flipped over to reveal the faces of her tormentors, or those who stood by as her essence was stolen.

During a talk I recently gave to a group of high school students, I asked them to identify someone they know for certain to be biased.

“Ok,” I began, “How about Osama bin Laden?”

“Definitely,” they agreed.

“Can you prove it?”

“He hates America, he’s responsible for 9/11.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s common fact,” they scoffed, “Everyone knows that.”

“Have you ever met him?” I asked, “How did you discover it was him?”

“Watch the news,” someone chided.

“Ok, fair and balanced. We’re looking for evidence. Let’s say we get all our information about Osama from Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. Is Bill biased?

“Yea,” a few young Democrats laughed, “He loves Bush.” Thoughtfully, a boy added, “It’s clear what he believes about things - abortion, the war in Iraq, terrorism…”

“And that helps you to identify his bias?”

“Sure.”

“So you know things about him, what he thinks, how he feels…What did O’Reilly have for breakfast this morning?” I asked. “I had two cups of coffee, by the way. Can you think of someone else’s bias you might have more evidence of?”

“How about you?” a young Republican erupted.

I winked. “You’re so right and you’re almost there.”

“You’re saying I’m biased?!” he grimaced, his discovery not relieving his frustration.

“I’m saying you know more about yourself than anyone else,” I encouraged. “You have more evidence of your own bias than any other source of information you could ever find. It’s your eyes and your ears you are learning through, and a lifetime worth of experience is how you integrate what you encounter. But that means you’re also the most qualified person in the world to evaluate that bias. Your’s is the only voice on the planet for which you have everything you need to critically analyze. You know where you spent Christmas Eve three years ago and you know what you’re going to do Friday night. Can you tell me the same about Wolf Blitzer?”

Bias need not be a four-letter word. Bias is simply the culmination of our experiences and a pre-consolidation of our understanding. No politician, reporter or teacher is exempt from their perspective, and rightly so. Be wary of the person who claims to possess a coin with the world engraved into opposing halves. Listen with caution when a reporter tells the story of another’s life without giving pause to reconcile you to his own.

As educators, we retain a remarkable possibility, an exercise in honesty, to teach not facts to be remembered, but perspectives to be questioned. If we are to bestow anything, let it be the facility of our students to doubt us, to disagree with what we know and to discover their own truths.

Our endeavor is a risky one. Our method seems absurd and impractical. Our discoveries will be wrought with the discomfort of allowing our beliefs to be challenged and limited by the constraints of our own senses. Rightly so.

Sincerely,


mark turner

Founder, Research Journalism Initiative