On the cusp of election season, I am reminded again that we live in the midst of a “blame society,” where nothing happens without a nefarious intent on the part of somebody.
Take politicians. When you speak candidly with many of them, they will often tell you that they feel torn ? all of the time ? that their real selves and their preferred opinions have been subverted by the 1,000-pound gorilla.
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That gorilla is survival in office or the simple need to do everything possible to be re-elected. As William Wordsworth wrote nearly 300 years ago, “We must prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet.” This begets a need for a label popular with voters in one?s district and cash contributing interests.
That makes partisanship the rule. Today we would have no room for a staunch Republican such as former Baltimore Mayor Theodore McKeldin, who was a civil rights advocate in the ?60s, or William Donald Schaefer, who in his mayoral role rebuilt the city as a Democrat who understood and promoted a business-friendly environment.
How did we get in this mess that strains our public officials so much? When was it a survival necessity to essentially kick statesmanship to the curb in order to have a political career?
I trace it back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when, as a certified social studies teacher in Baltimore City, I watched the slow dismantling of fact-based history and social sciences courses because they were not “relevant” and because they were “boring.” I worked at the great Polytechnic, where the venerable department chairman Albert J. Silverman resisted changing the curriculum until his retirement in the mid-1970s. When later I became a chairman at several schools before changing careers in 1982, I tried to do some of the same things, but it was swimming upstream ? here and elsewhere.
So, now many of the students taught during that era when “facts died” have children of voting age who often star on TV show segments like Jay Leno?s “Jay Walking.” That is the portion of the show where Jay often asks simple fact questions like “What state is Chicago in?” and the answer comes back, “Phoenix.”
It is pathetic because it means that at least two voting generations have a low-level understanding of simple facts and everyday issues. This forces public officials to deal strictly with popularity, gained by checking the prevailing majority opinion.
So what do we do? Fact-based courses of study are coming back, but we need regional, multicultural standards of factual knowledge without overt partisan flavoring to be the permanent basis of yearly examinations in social sciences.
When voters have the sophistication to really make decisions based upon some depth, maybe the public office contestants will revert to speaking to that depth.
Bob Leffler is the owner of The Leffler Agency, whose clients include The Baltimore Orioles, the U.S Naval Academy and The Baltimore Examiner. The advertising agency has offices in Baltimore and Tampa, Fla.
