Good morning, and a happy new year to you.  It's 5:30 a.m.  here
in chilly south Georgia.  Asking what am I do up at such an ungodly early
hour on new year's day.  Well, Susan and I don't really do it up on new
year's eve.  We have a quiet dinner with close friends, sit around and
talk friend talk, barely make it to the dropping of the ball.  No hats, no
horns, no confetti, no screaming, no bacchanalia.  Just a series of loving
hugs and quiet kisses, and then it's home.  So, I was up and out early on
the street in the near freezing, frosty air before the first sunrise of
the new year.  There was a strange vacancy in this morning, a dark quiet
and stillness.  It's the first day after the six celebrating weeks before. 
The lit candles have consumed the wax, the Yule log is ashes, the menorahs
are on the shelves, the trees are browning and shedding their needles, the
floors once strewn with the refuse of presents are clean, many of the
holiday decorations are boxed, the clanging bells and charity pots are
stored, the champagne bottles are empty, the latkes have been eaten (those
are Jewish edible mortar that doubles as potato pancakes), horns are
tooted out, confetti and silly hats are piled knee deep, class are about
to resume. For a moment, on this first day of 1999, the year next to last
year of the millennium (2001 really begins the new millennium) seems to
hesitate to catch its breath before moving on after its first exhaustive
sprinting minutes

	There is something invariably touching about a six week feast of
bountiful thanks and abundant giving at which we all find our own reasons
to be thankful and give.  Ever think about the fact that at the moment the
year is almost over, the days are shortest, and the light is weakest comes
the time of this miraculous time of bursting joy and glorious wonder and
bountiful sharing.  People say that by the end of the twelfth month, the
year is ancient enough to have shown us its wisdom. We know what to be
grateful for by now.

	So, for what am I grateful.  Yeah, for the usual stuff about
health, happiness, family, friends.  There was so much swirling around in
my head as I trudge along in my Carolina blue grubbies, nose pale red,
eyes tearing, nose leaking.  But, for some unknown strange reason I kept
thinking of a special student, now a sophomore, named Jill.  Don't know
why Jill in particular.  Maybe it's because of Jill's influence that I'm
becoming a volunteer book recorder in the university'sspecial services
office and a volunteer reader to fourth graders in a local school system's
"get them to read" program. I don't ask about these things. 

	So, with the first aromas of freshly brewed cup of 1999 thawing
coffee at my side, let me tell you about Jill and why I think my
resolution thoughts are centering around her.  Jill is what the PC jargon
calls a "special needs" student although she is by no means a special
needs person.  I've known Jill since she first arrived at the University a
little over a year ago.  Members of the local Jewish community have taken
her under their wing and have been taken by her. Every time I see her on
campus, she gives me a pack of gum and a small capsule of miniature M &
Ms. I trade them for a Tootsie Pop.  We have been together in a couple of
classes.  She has a significant learning disability with which the kind
and warm special services people have helped me.  She has difficulty
reading. We have to record her assigned reading material.  And after
untold laborious hours of stop and go listening, after she learns whatever
it is she is supposed to learn, she has great difficulty expressing and
communicating her knowledge either orally or on paper.  It is almsot
impossible for her to keep up with a class lecture.  She needs copies of
someone's notes.

	She is not a beauty queen, but she has an inner beauty that is
royal.  She is intelligent, diligent, alert, caring, always smiling in
spite of the fact that the world has not often smiled back and is for her
often a dim play of shadows and murmurs.  She doesn't have many friends
among the students, and not much of a social life.  She has a car and
lives off campus with two other students.  At times when we are sitting in
the hall sucking on Tootsie Pops, she wonders about her future.  She
wonders what her lot in life will be and if she will ever have a family. 
Yet, there is a refreshing and appealing aura of authenticity and
innocence about her.  I have never seen her without a smile on her face or
in her soul.  I have never heard her say, "I am ashamed of being...."  or
"I am embarassed of being...."  She just says, "I was born this way. " 
She wants so much to help other people help themselves. 

	Some professors act as barriers to that goal.  They want to treat
her matter-of-factly as they do other students: nameless and faceless. 
Some teachers are especially frustrated, at times antagonized and
threatened by Jill's presence.  They really do not want to take extra
time, inconvenience themselves, alter the comfort of their routine. I have
had a professor cruelly say to me that Jill will never be a "productive
member of society" and shouldn't be on campus taking classes.  Another
told her that it wasn't his job to help her in class, but go to special
services.  He told her that it wasn't her fault for not being able to do
the work, it was society's fault for all the trouble she has to go to for
letting her think she belongs on campus. Educating Jill, the professor
implied was socially irresponsible because it took resources away from
other, more promising and profitable uses.  Most of the professors think
that Jill's limited prospects don't make her worthy enough to be worth the
work and anguish and expense.  Thankfully they are partiall balanced off
by some professors who compassionately put things aside and give of their
time to work with her, support her, and encourage her.  And, of course,
there are those neat, caring special services people. 

	I suppose people could conjure up a host of rationalizing
academic, financial, and social philosophies, arguments: we don't have the
time to devote to one student; we can't water down our curriculum; we
don't have the money to serve their needs and make the campus accessible. 
We find funds for all sorts of things, but always seem to have difficulty
to find the monies for people.  We find monies to beautify the campus and
negotiate to buy a football stadium, and somehow can't scratch enough
together to beautify lives and help people negotiate through life.  We are
ready to do what we have to do, are required to do, are told to do, but we
don't really deserve the bestowal of a congressional medal of honor.  And,
on it goes.

	So many people condemn and imprison people like Jill to live in a
living death of solitude and living a divided life separated from our
lives.  Oh, they don't do it with any formal or structural
institutionalization; they use more subtle and emotionally self-serving
means.  They use a word, a gesture, a tone, a gaze here and there that
makes her so different in their eyes from them that they don't think much
of dumping her into a deep, dark pit of irrelevance or placing her on the
waiting list of the forgotten and neglected by categorizing her as a "Oh,
you're only a ......" 

	Yet, we are a fickled specie.  We want the faith to rise about
ourselves and yet find it easier to remain in a medieval funk that pulls
us below ourselves.  Jill is a reflection of that glaring contradiction
between our most deeply felt moral and social conviction, and our most
widespread social and educational policy.  On one hand, we affirm the
essential dignity of each person.  On the other had, we demand that each
person must achieve, that is, has to "earn" his or her dignity. Our most
cherished symbols, our most beloved stories, our current best sellers, our
most revered words, and our heroes urge us to love ourselves, our neighbor
and our enemies; we are told all people are created equal, that we are
born with inalienable rights, that we have equal opportunity to life and
happiness, that we are all children of God, that we all have a unique
potential, that each of us is sacred, holy, precious.  We pronounce these
profound convictions in our homes, from our pulpits,, in our political
wells, on the streets, and in our halls of ivy.  They are essential
articles of our social, political, cultural, educational, and theological
faith, at least in words. 

	Yet, while we yearn for beatitudes, we board beasts who we let
roam freely in this "dog eat dog world."  While we say, "I am proud of
what I say," we so easily explain and rationalize away what we do with a,
"in the real world."  Jill, and others like her--my son, Robby, who many
of you know has ADHD--is asked to say "I'm not O.K." until or unless she
proves that she has a demonstrated talent that is valued by others, that
she can make what others judge to be a valuable contribution to society,
that she has reached a bar of achievement set by others.  Personal dignity
and respectability is not inherent or inalienable; it's a conditional
iffy. And, our schools, where we level, track, isolate, tag, label,
separate are the front line--or at least a solid reflection-- of our
culture.  We use dignity as a reward, respectability as an incentive,
value as an award.  We place conditions on justice for all:  do your work
hard; pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; assume the sole
responsibility for your learning. Honors, awards, scholarships are
prerequisites for recognition. Acceptance and affection are conditioned
upon achievement and certain "socially appropriate and acceptable" actions
of respect, obedience, propriety, normality, and docility. 

	We tend to applaud and glow when we hear of those teachers who are
flexible and "progressive" and will broaden the area of achievement: "I
know such and such has a unique potential.  It doesn't have to be in
astrophysics or medicine or history; it could be in art, sports or in any
one of his intelligence, and I'm going to continue to look for whatever it
is so and so can excel at."  But, it still reveals a sentiment that
highlights our obsession with achievement and success, since it says, " we
don't care what so and so does as long as he does something well."  It is
an ethic of conditional love: "we'll love you if you make it.  Even if we
have lengthened the list of making it, you still must make it."  But, we
are quick to condemn as meaningless "touchy-feely" b.s. those teachers'
dedication and commitment and willingness to help a student find
fulfillment and a sense of well- being and self-esteem.  Worth too often,
it seems, is not inherent, but bestowed as a medal pinned to the chest
subject to trial, examination, assessment. 

	I have to admit that I have found myself falling into that trap
and doing that all too often.  And, maybe it was a simple few seconds
message we found on the answering machine from Robby joyfully wishing us a
happy new year that is prodding my soul this morning.  Maybe I am talking
about Jill, but remembering Robby's near devastating trials and
tribulations that left callouses on his spirit and soul by so many
calloused teachers. If that be true, I make no apologies for it. 
Regrettably you have to experience the biting chill of a harsh winter to
appreciate the luxury of a warm coat and house.

	To be sure, our need to believe in the nobility of each person is
the engine that pulls us out of darkness, most educational training and
programs for special people have a good and noble purpose that has, quite
literally, opened doors and let fresh air in for many who in past days
have been hidden in dark staleness behind closed doors.  Whatever good it
may bring, however, an overly focusing on this utilitarian approach could
be fatally flawed if crudely applied.  It would tolerate, perhaps even
condone, the dismissal of people like Jill into the shadows of the
unnoticed and unwanted.

	Jill is as good as any one else and yet she is asked to
demonstrate that fact.  We demand that she has to prove she is deserving
of our attention, energy, time, and money.  For her to have dignity, she
has to pursue it; she has to achieve.  So, if she gets an A, she has a lot
of respectability; if she gets a D, she has less.  The higher grade in our
eyes, determines her greater worth.  "Get the grade or you don't make the
grade."  "Get the test score or we get testy."  It is so routine, so
pervasive, it is hardly noticed and barely questioned.  Like academic
cheerleaders waving pom-poms, we sing out from the sidelines: 
"Excellence, excellence, is our cry! Q..U..A..L..I..T..Y! Yeeeeaaaah, 'A'! 
Yeeeeaaaah, 'A'!".  All of that still rests on the unshakable conviction
that dignity and worth must be earned.  And with that conviction we
unintentionally and inadvertently hurt, suppress, oppress, diminish,
denigrate, segregate, stratify .  So maybe we ought to ask ourselves, "Are
'normal' people more deserving than 'special' people?"  "Are 'smart'
people a higher order of specie than 'dumb' people?" " Are A students more
entitled than the 'average' C student?" " Are honor students honorable and
those who graduate without honors without honor?"  On our answers rest
what happens to our immense and overwhelming yearning for unconditional
love that we all have, for "love me for who I am and can be" rather than
"love me for what I do or what I have." 

	We'll use emotionally self-satisfying and vindicating buzz words
and phrases to answer those and other questions.  But, this is not a
matter of human nature; nor is it an issue of an impersonal fact of life;
nor is it tied up in the knots of complexity and complication; nor is it a
matter of unfairness; nor is it something to do with "the world" or "the
system." or "reality."  It is simply and truthfully a matter of personal
choice and accountability.  The problem is not whether something external
called "life" is fair; it's a question of whether each of us is fair. 

	At this time of giving, I realize that Jill's real present is her
presence.  Unwrap her gift and you will see that it is not about
productivity, not about achievement, not about contribution.  It is about
humanity.  To those naysayers who preach that Jills presence is a sign of
impending academic Armageddon, I say--I scream out--Jill is worth it.  She
has a worth.  The extent we see her value, is a reflection of our values. 
Her value, if it need be argued and proven that she has a value, comes
precisely from the challenge she poses to the usual definitions of
"value."  She is a living reminder that the range of human experience is
broader than the narrow confines imposed by budgets, programs, GPAs, jobs;
that faith and hope creates optimism, compassion, fairness which enables
us to rise about ourselves.  She has expanded the world of her fellow
students, and the world of those who care about her.  They aren't as
afraid of "difference"  or "strangeness" as they were before they met and
worked with her.  The people in the triads haven't just come to accept
her.  She has become their friend.  They don't shy away from her.  No,
they have a snack together, go to a movie together, work together.  They
didn't feel they were propping her up.  A couple members of her triads
wrote throughout their journals that Jill was helping them to see that for
people like Jill being treated with dignity and worth is something that
they have to fight every day.  Sometimes it is a battle that almost sucks
her dry; sometimes it creates an anxiety that almost suffocates her
spirit; sometimes it lets a depression creep in that nearly imposes a
surrender of that which is so angelic of her.  One student said it help
her see her own daily struggle with personal hurt and pain and fear and
depreciation that she had rationalize as "that's just me" and explained
away with "I have always been ...."  They also said at various times in
their journals that they saw parallels in attitudes of African-Americans,
women, homosexuals;  people in wheel chairs, with crutches or canes or
dogs; towards people who walk and talk differently;  towards people of
other nationalities and cultures and religion; and interestingly, they saw
parallels in attitudes of students in general in response to depreciating
attitudes of faculty. 

	We need the Jills among us everywhere all the time to touch up our
flawed portrait of ourselves and each other.  Her most profound effect is
to shake us out of our complacency, smugness, and hardness, to bring us in
from the biting cold of the distancing and objective and harsh outside to
be warmed at the hearth of compassion inside. She invites us to think
philosophically, educationally, practically, socially, culturally,
metaphorically, theologically, and above all, honestly about ourselves. 
Without a word, she poses the deepest questions. What is a life?  What is
human?  What makes any human life worth it?  What are life's limits?  What
it is about life that is life-giving?  Are the answers something about
holiness or sacredness or love or grace, something about a deep and hidden
community that stand in contrast to emphasized surface differences,
something well beyond the material concerns of everyday life?  What are
each of our responsibilities to become engaged and involved?  Until we
seek the answers, we each are morally and spiritually, as well as
socially, unfulfilled; we are not as good teachers as we are capable of
being. 
  
	I don't have the answers, but I do have the questions.  And I
guess my resolution for the coming year, if I must make a resolution, is
to let Jill's presence nudge me to keep looking for the most important,
transcendent answers. 

	May you have a happy turn of the calendar.  Bless, and . . . . 


Make it a good day.

                                                       --Louis--


Louis Schmier                     [log in to unmask]
Department of History             http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html 
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA  31698                           /~\        /\ /\
912-333-5947                       /^\      /     \    /  /~\  \   /~\__/\
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                          /\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
                        -_~    /  "If you want to climb mountains,   \ /^\
                         _ _ /      don't practice on mole hills" -    \____




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