We have heard from the White House this week that we are living in a “teachable moment” – on race, as far as they are concerned. However, this presidential term – and perhaps, even, the term before it – has been one collective “teachable moment” for our nation.
(Excerpt from a speech delivered to the Lee County (NC) Republicans July 26 2010)
When we talk about academics in America today, we hear about how our schools are not emphasizing the three Rs enough like educators used to do in days long gone. As we may remember, the three Rs aren’t really Rs at all, but they were – and still are – considered the basic tenets of education that our children must leverage and master in order to hold the keys of their future – and America’s future prosperity – in their hands. Those principles – writing, arithmetic, and reading – are not just planks in a forgone platform of education that made sense in the one-room schoolhouses from decades ago. As well, these principles are not just the ingredients of a catchy slogan for education today. These principles – the three Rs – are keys to our future as Americans politically and socially. The three Rs will lead us in action for a better America or we will ignore them as we continue down a path of mediocrity, of debt, and of national despair and instability.
Without applying the three Rs of academics to our education in improving the political and social realms of contemporary America, we are left fighting the dynamic that we are currently facing. Without proper application today, the three Rs – writing, arithmetic, and reading – W, A, R – can lead us to R – A – W – raw, as in the raw sensitivity that most of us as Americans are feeling today over issues including race, illegal immigration, the mid-term elections, and the proficiency – or misgivings – of the Obama administration. Without proper application of our three Rs – writing, arithmetic, and reading – W, A, R – we will continue our national experience with the internal war that we are undergoing, a battle where ideals are weapons to fight fellow citizens, not pathways to lead us all to a better America. Without the courage to create, the numbers to act, and the wisdom to seize the moment, we will be a nation that is dictated to by an out-of-control government, inflating debt past the point of no return, and ignorance of our past greatness or our current potential to achieve even more as a beacon of good in our land and throughout the world.
So, as Tea Party patriots, as Republicans, as author-activists writing a better course, and as Americans looking to build a better way for us all – we have to ask: what is the best application of the three Rs?
It comes from our conviction to embrace the three relevant Rs that we have discovered through the teachable moment over the past few weeks – and, in fact, over the past 18 months in our nation.
