One purpose of the American Declaration of Independence was to let the rest of the world know exactly why the Colonists were seeking independence from the British Crown. Thus the phrase “… a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them….” at the end of the first paragraph. I am not declaring war on anyone, despite the fact that the globalist “elites” and their minions have been waging war on all of us for some time now. I do however, feel compelled to declare my motivations for sitting down to pen this story, an inside perspective as to what ails education, successes and failures fighting against those ills, and what might help cure it.
In Brief
I spent the vast majority of my 27 year teaching career teaching social studies at a Southern California public high school. World history was my staple subject as my Bachelors degree was in History with an emphasis on south east Asia. A decade or so into my career I started teaching Government and Economics. Two-thirds of the way through my career, I picked up a Masters degree in Education: Instructional Technology. The MA degree saw me develop and teach a few computer courses. I also developed and led the school’s Information and Communications Technology Academy, which focused on writing computer code.
Debate
Early in my career, I coached and taught Policy Debate, and traveled extensively with my small team on “the circuit”. Policy debate, for those not aware, debates U.S. government policy. Teams consist of two debaters and in any given round, one team is “Affirmative” and seeking to change government policy. The other team is “Negative” and seeks the status quo. The Affirmative team must show harms in current policy and offer an alternate policy. The Negative team argues that the harms are minimal, the status quo is better policy, and/or the suggested policy change creates more harms. Both teams use primary source evidence (not news articles) to back their arguments to a judge(s). This requires teams to have multiple large totes, full of copies of government policies, court opinions, and other primary evidence.
I did the debate coach gig for five years, it was a lot of fun, but half of my weekends were spent on the road and it became just too burdensome. It was a lot of fun though. I will never forget sitting in Ontario airport in late 2001 with my six students, surrounded by 6-8 totes duct-tapped shut for travel. It was still a little scary to fly at that time still, with the Nation recovering from 9/11, and we got some really bewildered and concerned looks.
Onward
This is a preview of the book On The Other Side of the Lunch Table. The book is being shared with paid subscribers to kennys.substack.com during the writing process. Readers are invited to comment and participate in the editing process. Each weekly update will have a preview portion for non subscribers and will also be posted here on Desert Truth.