Also, attached to this email is a letter from Jere about our decision to have the Gospel choir perform at this year’s graduation. I encourage you to read it. He provides an explanation for both the circumstances that got us to this point as well as what we propose for the future.

My role here is to apply Jere’s framework more explicitly to the high school and all of us who work here. I’m an educator, not a lawyer. So, my point of entree into all of this is: ’what have we taught the kids about how adults in a democratic society handle charged, complex issues?’

Examples of acrimony and factionalism are legion. What is typically modeled for kids is that conflict is managed by an aggressive assertion of one’s position or interests and a quick discrediting or dismissal of other positions. And all of this is usually done with the volume turned up. These scripts are well-established. We – the adults of the world – know very well how to assume these roles.

So, if we are going to be on the national news again, I’d like it to be because we re-wrote this script. We figured out how to engage issues with long and complex histories in a way that doesn’t rend our community.

 I’ve talked this year about balancing advocacy and inquiry. The present moment provides an opportunity for us to norm our approach to public discourse along these lines. As a model, none of us is asked to abandon our immediate interests, but, before all else, we agree to be learners.

With learning as our touchstone, we can more effectively keep our eyes on three larger prizes:

• The first is the quality of our communal life. Are we defined by our differences and the camps they spawn or are there deeper commonalities – like mutual respect – that inform our public interaction? An inquiry, or learning, orientation facilitates the latter.
• The second is the kids. They are watching our every move. And, from what they glean, they will make judgments about how, as adults, they should conduct the business of the world. If we graduate kids who understand that solving conflict is not synonymous with defeating others, we have enhanced the quality of life.
• Lastly, the quality of our ultimate decisions will improve. We will have moved past half-truths and caricatures and anchored our decisions in something resembling a full-understanding.

So, here’s what I am asking of all of us who work at the HS[and, eventually, I’ll modify this to ‘…who have kids at the HS…’ when I send a version of this home]:

• Around your lunch tables, in line at the grocery store or wherever you find yourselves engaged in this topic, I’d like you to lead.
• By this I mean, I’d like us to be the set of voices that challenges those who would make this about camps. I’d like us to exercise our collective strength to establish this as the framing question: ‘what can we learn from each other about our respective positions?’.
• Concretely, when faced with an assertion, instead of rebutting, probe. Gently.
• When asked to take a position, include your assumptions and personal history. They matter in helping others to see differing positions empathically.

All of the above has been about the larger context in which the issue of religious music and graduation sit.

I do have a more immediate interest as well. I want graduation to be about the kids and not the controversy.  Thanks. Mark.