October 16, 2014
Deb: To practice genuine
democracy in our schools, our unions, and our communities, we need a different
understanding of what it means to be political.
When I taught at Bard High
School Early College in New York City, one of my favorite questions on my
mid-year exam was: What did Aristotle mean when he wrote that "man is a
political animal?"
For most Americans, the
term "political animal" would invoke the worst of American political
culture: the paranoid ranting of talk radio, the political television shows
modeled after wrestling entertainment, the election campaigns dominated by
negative attack ads, and the gridlock of a Congress where narrow partisan
advantage is everything. No wonder so many Americans run in the opposite
direction when they hear "political."
