Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

Knowledge is gained from a search for truth. While educators cannot hand off a philosophical truth to students, they guide them on their way as they help them to learn about and understand the world they are living in.

As Snyder aptly points out, we cannot abandon facts. Water boils at 212 degrees … at sea level anyway. At higher altitudes, water boils at lower temperatures. As educators, our job is to help students learn not only basic facts, but understand the nuance that can surround them.

Facts combined with nuance in their application becomes truth. Truth without underlying facts is useless and most often is a form of falsehood/propaganda. Pilate famously asked Jesus, “What is truth?”

Educators help children find it. With the truth, democracy and freedom are preserved for another generation. That is why education is under an onslaught to destroy it or remake it, especially America’s universities. Those who would replace our democracy with an autocracy want to suppress all criticism.

Why is it that the most heated conflicts over schoolhouse curriculum is social studies? Why are certain truths regarding the treatment of Black people, indigenous people, and others being removed in favor of a one-sided story glorifying white superiority? Why can’t we tell the full story of America, the good, the bad, and the ugly?

Because power does not want to be criticized and because power uses fear to suppress ideas that compete with its ideology.

We, as educators, need to equip students with the skills they need to question and critique what Kellyanne Conway notoriously dubbed ‘alternate facts.’ We need to equip students with the skills they need to articulate truth with the facts that underly it.

Otherwise, all is spectacle. Sports, Friday Night Lights, concerts, and plays are an important part of school, but if there is nothing else like literature, mathematics, and science plus history and civics, then they become only spectacle. Together, the electives form an essential part of the curriculum; alone, nothing but spectacle.

Ancient Rome was comprised of a few oligarchs (the senate), an emperor (actually, a military dictatorship with hereditary succession,) and the masses of workers and slaves. There was a reason Rome provided the masses with bread and circuses. The empire lasted longer than the original monarchy or the republic. The emperor had the biggest wallet and arranged for the most blinding lights. Those lights kept the masses from revolting.

As educators, our duty is to help our students turn down the lights and see the stars that twinkle in the sky and will continue to shine regardless of what we do to our society. That is a truth that will outlast us.