Lift Up Your Head CHRISTOPHER DAWSON ON HOPE AMID CRISIS
By KRISTEN GRANT ‘18 CSMA
The topic for my Master’s essay was conceived in what should have been the most mundane of situations – a parent-led committee at my children’s public charter school. That year, however, this committee on “School Climate” became the center of an emerging battle in that season of the interminable culture wars. The school was equipped with the full apparatus of liberal democratic society for dealing with controversy: committees, boards, elections, public comment, parliamentary procedures and so forth.We were supposed to be able to engage in rational discourse and work toward compromise. But there was no reasoning, and there was no compromise, because there was no common moral vision or vocabulary with which to engage these difficult questions together. Even appeals to such ostensibly shared ideals as dignity, truth, equality and justice were less a call to a unifying vision of the school’s purpose than an ode to the righteousness of one’s own side and its absolute demands. And as we sat through months of meetings and listening sessions and public comment periods, I foundmyself thinking again and again, “I don’t think this works.”
Page 20 stthomas.edu/catholicstudies
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