NOT JUST CATS OR DOGS

 After a recent writer's conference for kids, I was approached by two gaggles of fourth and fifth graders. The spokesperson for the first group asked if I liked Taylor Swift. Who doesn't? I answered, sending the first group squealing away while members of the second group, with downcast eyes, shook their heads disapprovingly and turned away.

That's how it is in grade school. It's easy to take sides.  On music. Favorite foods. Whether cats or dogs make better pets. 

Obviously, serious current event discussions are more treacherous but I've always tried to create an environment in which each one's voice is heard and no one's voice is denigrated.  That's how it should be, how it still is when it comes to music, foods or favorite pets. With any luck, it might someday be that way in politics.

Unfortunately, this year too many adults are just plain lying. Although I have always adhered to the longstanding principle that a teacher’s political views should be kept private (and will honor this commitment during my upcoming school visits), current events force me to put away my pollyanna perspective at least here on my personal blog. Sometimes there really is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Sometimes, we have to take a stand. 

While it is true that everyone’s voice matters, the ground rules demand that the opinions we defend should be rooted in verifiable truth. In or out of political discourse, the overriding guidelines should always be integrity and  kindness. I care too much about young people to be utterly silent as they navigate the many landlines in this election season. 

Right now we actually have a political party campaigning to place a convicted and unrepentant felon into the White House. A convicted and unrepentant felon. I still can't wrap my head around it— people have placed their trust in a candidate who has already demonstrated that he does not abide by the laws he swore to uphold. A candidate who, with calculated deceit and treachery, has amassed an army of supporters willing to storm our capital and dismantle our democracy. And while I agree that our immigration system needs reform, this candidate believes desperate families searching for a better way of life are poisoning the blood of America. It would be good for him to remember the words of Emma Lazarus that are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…  

We are not discussing favorite foods or cats or dogs. We are discussing the country I love and the freedoms I've championed in my classrooms, books and poems.

I am not asking readers to take my word for what right and what is wrong. Elections are about choice and I still believe that each of us has the right to form our own opinions. It's precisely because I do believe in choice, that I don’t want the government to tell us what we can read or whom we should love. I am only asking readers— especially young readers— to keep their hearts open, to listen to the voices around them but to use their own intellect and their own senses to evaluate what is true and what is not, what will create a more just world and what will not.

Most of my readers are too young to vote so this blog a might seem a pointless endeavor. But it’s never to young— or old— to open our hearts, question our values and work towards a more just, inclusive and peaceful world.

As for cats or dogs, there is a cat named Evie that I love, but my heart belongs to Finnegan B.