America is a tune. It must be sung together.
~Gerald Stanley Lee
If we are fortunate enough to have good teachers, we discover at any early age why America is so great and unique among the world’s nations. In elementary school, I had only a vague sense of this greatness from memorizing the names of our founding fathers, significant historical events, the names of documents, and so on. I knew America was special somehow, but the true magnitude and originality of what the founding fathers created didn’t hit home for me until the seventh grade, thanks to a teacher by the name of Dr. Stock. He wasn’t a history or political science teacher as one might expect; he was a Physical Education coach.
Dr. Stock was a kind and soft-spoken man with an easy laugh who usually stuck with the P.E. curriculum. But one sunny afternoon, he pulled us all away from a volleyball game fifteen minutes before class ended and asked us to sit down on a patch of grass near the court.
The Olympic Games were in full swing at the time, so he asked us what events we were most interested in. Everybody yelled out something different, of course. He then asked if we had noticed anything different about the American teams compared to the teams from other countries. We all looked at each other, as kids often do, wondering who was going to come up with the right answer. The fact that nobody did demonstrated how much we all took America’s uniqueness for granted.
Dr. Stock smiled, waiting for the penny to drop, but it still didn’t, so he looked at my friend sitting next to me and said, “Matt Moller, your last name is German.” Then he looked at me and said, “Mark Rickerby, your last name is English.” (Actually, my parents immigrated to America from Northern Ireland, but he was right: Their ancestors started out in Northern England.) He then looked at the boy on my left and said, “Jeff Napoli, your last name is Italian.”
And on down the line he went . . .
“Sunti Singhanate, your last name is Thai. Rosaleen Andersen, your last name is Swedish or Danish. Alex Osorio, your name started in Spain, but from meeting your parents, I know they came here from Mexico.” Alex smiled and nodded as the teacher continued through the rest of the class and covered just about every nationality under the sun.
He then looked at a black girl named Cindy Jackson and said, “Cindy, I wish I could say your ancestors came to America from Africa by choice, but they were brought here as slaves, and one of them was probably named after President Andrew Jackson.”
Cindy said, “I know. My mama told me that.”
This was a revelation to me. Until then, I had never made the connection between slavery and all the black kids named Jackson, Washington, Jefferson, etc. I liked Cindy and felt sad to know that the ancestors of such a nice girl had suffered so much. I also had never really thought much about the variety of racial and national backgrounds of my fellow students. They were just other kids to me. Having been born in America, I took our diversity for granted.
As I was lost in thought, Dr. Stock continued, “My last name is English, but my mother was from Poland. My point is that even though most of you were born here, your parents, or their parents, or some ancestor of yours you’ve never met, came here from somewhere else in search of a better life. Even our class here today represents Germany, England, Italy, Israel, Denmark, Mexico, Thailand, Africa, and many other countries. The same is true of our Olympic teams. But that’s not the case if you look at the names of players on teams from other countries. The German players have German surnames, the Italian players have Italian surnames, and so on, with very few exceptions. We are a nation of immigrants, the great grandchildren of slaves, descendants of Native American tribes, and the sons and daughters of exhausted refugees, fleeing faraway places with nothing but a dream and the clothes on their backs. Our families all started out somewhere else, but we’re all one team now, joined by the dream of a better life, a dream that America makes possible.”
He looked at our young faces one by one and then asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Again, we were silent. But this time, it wasn’t a thoughtless silence. Our minds were swimming with what it meant to be American. He continued, “Let me ask you this: Considering everything I just told you, what word would you use to describe America?”
This is why he was such a good teacher. He knew how important it is to engage children, not just give lectures. Galileo said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.” If it’s true of men, it must be doubly true of children.
Slowly, one by one, our hands went up. We said words like “unique,” “original” and “revolutionary.” He smiled, proud that we had understood his lesson. We were proud, too — some for the first time, like me, to know that we were part of such a wonderful place, that people flock to from every corner of the world to make dreams come true. We suddenly felt like we were all co-owners of Disneyland.
In my memory, I mark that day as the real beginning of my deep patriotism and love for America, and the knowledge of how very fortunate I was to be born in the greatest country mankind has ever conceived. Decades ago, one very wise but humble P.E. teacher succeeded in making the terms “melting pot” and “noble experiment” alive and personal for me, and I never again took for granted how lucky I am to be an American.
~Mark Rickerby
