Some days I think about my fifth grade class: the girl who sat next to me, that boy across the room who ate paste, the old cloakroom at the back. The big wooden teacher’s desk where Mr. Bergdoll sat.
Fifth grade was the year we went to school camp at Camp Red Raider for a whole week and the year we had the compulsory Sex Ed unit. I remember when we did skits about Greek Mythology in Language Arts and ours ended up being so hilarious that we got to perform it for other classes.
That was the year of the Kent State Massacre. We were in Cleveland Heights, less than an hour away. Mr. Bergdoll let us have a class debate. I argued on the side that the police should not have shot the students. There was a vote at the end - - my side lost.
I’m still burned up about that.
One of the things that is most disturbing to me right now is the daily proof that there are so many people in this country with the capacity for evil. It was clearly there, just waiting to be tapped. Every day we see Americans stepping up to perform acts of injustice, cruelty, selfishness, or turning their heads to ignore the suffering of others.
Just think. They were all in your classes at school. On the playground. On the bus. That man who smashed a woman’s car window and kidnapped her in broad daylight. The congressman who voted to allow the rendition of American citizens. The tech lackeys who shut down a program for special needs students transitioning to adult life.
They were always here, all along. When did they start to turn towards evil? What did it look like? How many times did we rub shoulders with them and not know it? Could we have done anything that would have changed the things that turned them away from love?
One man could not create the destruction we are experiencing. Not without help.
I find myself turning over my childhood, scanning classroom after classroom in my mind’s eye. Not for one moment did I ever really think: some of these children will turn out to be bad adults. I don’t know where I thought bad people came from.
They're home-grown, apparently. They were always here.
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