Teaching my course on The Enlightenment for junior English majors at Barnard, I couldn’t resist sharing something with my class. We’d been talking about Milton’s Areopagitica, a famous treatise defending freedom of the press—a cardinal principle of our democracy enshrined in the First Amendment. Freedom of the press has been under attack during the presidency of Donald Trump. He has attacked the media’s reports as “fake news” and called the press “the enemy of the people.”  Something unimaginable to me and so many others; something authoritarian dictators do.  But now we had something else to worry about—not just a sweeping attack on the press, but an attack on teachers and education. 

So, I brought into class the “Perspective” piece by Valerie Straus in the Washington Post about the bizarre comments Donald Trump, Jr., made at his father’s rally in El Paso, Texas.  Trump senior rallied his troops in defense of “the Wall”; his son provided back-up support. Here stood President Trump defending erecting walls, tightening our borders, while his son launched a brief but sharp attack on teachers, the very people who are dedicated to opening and expanding student’s minds. He encouraged the young people at the rally to protect themselves from teachers, who supposedly carry an invasive (not native?) “socialist” (that is, progressive) ideology. In essence, the closing off of America and the American mind as twin enterprises.

But what also strikes me is how Trump Junior’s comments included an ironic inversion of the motto from The Enlightenment. At the start of the semester, my women students read Immanuel Kant’s famous essay, “What is the Enlightenment,” written in 1784.  “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is a man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own reason’! that is the motto of enlightenment.” 

And then Donald Trump, Jr., boldly, proudly declared to his audience, “You know what I love? I love seeing some young conservatives [the hope of the future?] because I know it’s not easy (Crowd applauds and shouts.) Keep up that fight [it is a culture war? A war for the soul of America?]. Bring it to your schools. You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth. You don’t have to do it. Because you can think for yourselves. They can’t.”

“Loser teachers”? Was he distinguishing between liberal/socialist and conservative/capitalist teachers? Or was he suggesting that teachers generally are losers? (socialists, committed to diversity and “inclusion,” socio-economic change), echoing his father’s pronouncement of love for “the uneducated”? Does the fact that our teachers are poorly paid, striking for better conditions, make them losers?

 I’d be surprised if Donald Trump Jr. ever read (or even heard of) Kant, but here he was, echoing The Enlightenment philosopher… Dare to be bold, dare to use your reason… Only Trump Jr. was basically saying, stand up to educators! Dare to not be educated! As if that would be a feat of bravery or maturity.

It was The Enlightenment (beginning in the seventeenth century, but stretching through the eighteenth, and culminating in the American and French Revolutions) that brought us “liberalism.” Liberalism, despite its well-known problems and shortcomings, taught the importance of educating the individual, that education was essential to the health of the nation, and to democracy, which was imagined as the best system of government.  It led to the development of a public education system.  My students were appalled to see educators, teachers, vilified… as indoctrinators.  As Valerie Strauss’s editorial pointed out, it has always been authoritarian leaders who attack the schools, crack down on professors and teachers. I think of how in Germany during the 1930s, Jews were not allowed to teach, ousted from universities, presumed as dangerous.  And now, it’s not just authoritarian regimes around the world. Right-wing parties and leaders in democracies in Europe and South America, are attacking teachers as dangerous, left-wing enemies of the nation.  They typically label these “bad” educators “socialist,” or Marxist--people who would undermine capitalism and the nation.  I wonder if, once again, there’s an anti-Semitic subtext?

How could it be a matter of pride not to be educated in the schools, especially the public schools and universities? Trump’s recent proposed budget for 2020 cuts $7.1 billion from Education (third year in a row of cuts), including 121% for the Education Department. It has often been noted that a large segment of Trump’s core are white people, particularly white Christian male evangelicals, who have not attended college. The appointment of Betsey DeVos as Secretary of Education is symptomatic of the current suspicion of our education and teachers. She never attended public schools or a state university and sent her children to private schools. We have a president who won’t let his college grades be made public (much as he’s withheld his tax returns), and who according to Rex Tillerson, former U.S. Secretary of State, “doesn’t like to read.” He wants a wall to stop supposedly dangerous criminals from entering America, but most immigrants want not just safety, but economic and educational opportunities for their children. And here were Trump father and son urging conservative youth to feel pride, to take the “fight” (?) to the schools (exactly how?) as if they’d accomplish something wonderful by refusing to go to those colleges where teachers supposedly indoctrinate their students with socialism, acceptance of cultural and racial diversity, multiculturalism, and so on, all things that are imagined as undermining America’s national identity.

I’ve just finished reading the wonderful memoir by Tara Westover, “Educated,” which couldn’t be more timely.  It’s a powerful story of a young woman who grew up in a Mormon household, with a dominating father who did not allow his children to go to school, fearing they’d be indoctrinated by Satan.  Sound familiar? I wish these young people who attended the Trump rally in El Paso would read this book, which is about her becoming “educated,” about education as her salvation, but of course, most of them probably won’t.

I identify so strongly with Tara Westover, since for me too, education, and especially higher education, was liberating; a way for me to discover myself, to find and make a place in the world. A liberal education, opened my mind and my heart and encouraged me to dedicate my own life to doing the same for my students.  I had a difficult childhood growing up in an unusual household, with a domineering father, too, but he encouraged me to learn, and yes, to become a teacher.  “The world will always need teachers,” he’d say as I went off at age 17 to Indiana University. My apocalyptically-minded father was always prophesying end-times disaster, but I don’t think he ever expected that his beloved America would become a nation that didn’t value education, that we would have leaders encouraging teachers to carry guns while fearing their power to transform young minds. 

I thought my life was hard years ago. 

I was in my late thirties, had a little boy and was working full time teaching and trying to publish.  I was experiencing the old familiar juggle for professional women who are also mothers. The pull between wanting to be with my little one and needing to teach and write, not just for financial reasons, but because that’s a large part of who I am. I’m a mom and wife, but also a teacher and writer.  Those things are an essential part of my being and they connect me with many people.  And I’m certain those things will be part of my legacy in the future. 

In time, I figured, my wonderful little boy would grow up and the fight for my time and soul would lessen.  I loved every minute with him—taking him to see “The Muppets Take Manhattan” or “The Jungle Book” (even though I hated cartoons). I also loved taking him rollerskating, reading books together, and just being silly.  I treasured it all, knowing that he would be more independent, and eventually wouldn’t really want to spend so much time with me.  We’d still be loving, but I’d have more time for writing books and articles. I would be able to do it all.  When my parents got old, I had some of the same tensions, the same pull on my time, but they lived a thousand miles away and I wasn’t always called to care for them. When I went back to Connecticut to deal with a difficult, demented father while helping my exhausted mother, I knew in the back of my mind that in a few days I could just leave and return to my peaceful home. Never did I really think about the distant future. I didn’t think I’d have to relive these difficulties later in my life. 

But here I am.  I’m busier than ever professionally, asked to give talks and write papers. I feel that I’m teaching better than ever, understanding how to connect the past and its literary texts with the present, especially with our current challenges. But I have a husband who is riddled with what is called Parkinsons “plus,” making him ever more demanding of care and attention at this stage of his life. I knew my son would grow up and that my situation of feeling divided would be temporary.  But with my aging husband, now 80 years-old, the moment is temporary, but he’s not going to grow up…. He’s going to die. Though who knows when since his body is strong, despite the diseases, much like my mother who lingered with Alzheimers until she was 95.

Sometimes the days seem interminable. My challenge is not just to sleep or find time to do everything, but how to be loving, give him care, still be myself and not dragged under.  I’m often filled with sadness, anger, frustration and fear. So many mixed emotions, turbulent, even as I try to keep calm.  Immersing myself in work or writing keeps these things at bay. When I walk into the classroom and see the beautiful faces of my students eager to learn, I’m filled with joy and intellectually alive.  When I sit down to write, the ideas and words continue to come, thank God, and I can still focus. 

They say “self-care” is important—it’s not a word I particularly like, just as I’m not keen on the word “caregiver.”  I mean, isn’t that what we should always be doing? Caring about and for other people, other human beings, not just our family and loved ones? Of course, we must not sacrifice ourselves in the process. They say that helping others benefits you. It makes you feel better. But this care-giving now that I’m struggling with is something entirely different. It is, really, “taking care” of someone. To me, the phrase captures that it’s not just a gift but that it takes something from you as well.  There’s always the problem of balancing one’s own needs and health against another’s.  You can become a martyr, which some people may baskl in, but that’s not for me. 

I went to a support group last year where a woman taking care of her mother with Alzheimers said, “there is a purity in our relationship now, and I’m happy.”  “Well, I don’t feel that way,” I said.  The young rabbi said, “Well you will finally get there.” I thought to myself, but didn’t say, “what a pollyana-ish way of glossing over the tragic loss and denying reality.” Maybe if you’ve survived a difficult childhood, as I did growing up with a father who thought he was god, you’ve developed an instinct for getting by. 

Am I enriched by the experience or caring for my increasingly dependent husband? Or drained? It’s a combination I guess and I confess I don’t feel enriched at the moment.  Just torn between all the things I need (and want) to do. I’ve always got to make choices. Do I spend the next few hours at a hospital bed (he’s been hospitalized again for the third time in a month) with my agitated, miserable, but sweet husband, or do I spend them with my 3 year-old granddaughter who’s come for two days to visit?  One gives energy and joy to me, while the other takes it from me. Do I go to my new Parkinson’s support group, where we gain strength from sharing our miseries, or sneak off for a nice lunch to enjoy salad with buccatini cacio e pepe and a big glass of super-Tuscan wine, giving guilty thanks to God for being able to still relish life at times?

This is my daily struggle.