| Ms. Littman:
I'm glad you responded to my letter and have used it to stimulate further discussion with your readership.
I want to make several things very clear:
1. I am not attempting to use my influence to prevent the play from being performed. However, now that I've had a chance to read both the "early" (i.e. the one the class originally intended to perform) and the "later" versions of "Voices in Conflict," I think it should be clear to everyone the benefit that time, serious study, and thoughtful reflection will impart upon the version that is ultimately performed.
2. High-school students are mostly under the age of 18 - i.e. the age at which the government has determined that they are able to serve in the military and to vote in formal elections. In other words, prior to the age of 18, high-school-aged students are relieved of the responsibility of participating in our civic processes so that they may cultivate the critical thinking skills necessary to make these types of important decisions. You said in your response that Ms. Dickinson's advanced students were intending to stimulate discussion and therefore are not required to do thesis work. I would counter this contention by saying that if these students want to take on a serious subject, then they must be prepared to do the serious work necessary not only to stimulate but to frame and develop a serious discourse. Again, this is all part of the process of high-school learning. I went to that high school, and it is blessed with some extraordinary teachers, who would embrace the opportunity to hold the extra-cirricular seminars necessary to develop a project of this magnitude.
3. When I accused you of taking the quotes from my "Blizzard" article out of context, I was not accusing you of misquoting me but rather of distorting my intent by the way in which you used them in your column. The purpose of my article was to underscore the importance of assisting Iraqi schools. Through this assistance, Iraqi children in the greater-BGD area will have greater opportunities to continue their education beyond the primary-school threshold to which they are most often currently limited. By furthering their education - they like American school children - will have increased opportunities to make well-reasoned and informed decisions about the direction of their own lives and of their country. I was not attempting to suggest that they should be allowed rampant freedom of speech before reaching adulthood. Many middle-eastern media outlets are infamous propaganda tools of extremist government and insurgent groups, thereby allowing the public discourse on important domestic and international issues to be distorted. Primary- and secondary-school educations the world over are places for developing critical-thinking skills and for guided intellectual experimentation.
4. You accused my mother and sister of not attempting to provide balance by not contributing other excepts to the play's script. I think that you may be looking at the problem of the script's lack of objectivity from the wrong perspective - in you efforts to assess blame. The only part of the "original script" that a reasonable person would interpret as being pro-military-service (NOTE: I am NOT saying "pro-war" - for no reasonable person is pro-war) is the opening poem; the other 4 1/2 pages are filled with disillusionment, anger, and criticism of the military and our civilian leaders. My mother and sister were simply trying to encourage the drama teacher to provide context and objectivity - something that is the RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TEACHER when in a high-school/learning environment. Moreover, I agree that Gabriella could have written a play of her own - but instead, she has chosen to balance a schedule of honors classes and drama rehearsals with her responsibilities as the student leader of a club that has been responsible for the collection of hundreds of soccer balls for distribution through my unit to Iraqi children. These soccer-ball distributions have not only brought great joy to the lives of these children, but have also helped my unit's soldiers to build closer relationships with the local nationals in the dangerous areas that we patrol.
5. I also think you are being a bit presumptuous in your efforts to enlighten me about the different motivations and experiences of soldiers who have deployed to Iraq. Your support of the platoon-sponsorship program is admirable, and the experiences of the soldier whom you supported are indeed shared by many others. But I would like to make 2 points in response. First, as a junior officer, I live, train, and fight with these soldiers - and, as a result, we develop close personal bonds through which I have been able to counsel them on their concerns. Their morale and welfare are serious concerns of mine and the stress of deployments places great burdens on them and their families; but, as soldiers, we have a responsibility to fulfill the orders of our senior leadership. Instead of using our stress and discomfort as rhetorical props in a superficial political debate, the public must challenge our civilian leadership to widen and deepen the discourse on policy - i.e. to understand the complexity of the issues with which we are currently grappling and to determine practical courses of actions through which problems can be resolved. Second, there are soldiers who are proud of their service and recognize the benefits it has bestowed upon them. Not only do soldiers have access to educational opportunities and housing & healthcare benefits to which they would not otherwise have had access, but they have also had their perspectives enlarged through the seriousness of their experiences.
In closing, I would like to underscore again that freedom of speech is a privilege and a right: it is an extraordinary tool for shaping our nation's present and future. And, in an abstract intellectual sense, the principal of free speech is absolute. However, in a practical sense, we must be willing to do the hard thinking and work necessary for free speech's most effective application. We have a long history of defending this right, stretching from the infamous (e.g. allowing the dissemination of KKK and neo-Nazi propaganda) to the ridiculous (e.g. the Supreme Court's current case against the "bong hits for Jesus" high-school banner). But free speech's true legacy is only evident in the work of those people who have been willing to match the passion of their emotion with the rigor of their intellect. For example, Lincoln's famous "Cooper Union Speech," which is one of the central events in the abolition of slavery, is 7500 words serious discussion: moving rhetoric matched by substantive references to constitutional law as well as to historical and then-current events. We must, as a country, work harder to make the public discourse more serious - and this starts with how we train the younger generation in school.
Respectfully,
R.Z. Alessi-Friedlander |
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