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Metro Monday.\u00a0 Welcome to the frequently delayed, rattling Red Line blasting into the heart of DC.\u00a0 In a fit of early AM workaday depression, I take that extra step and rip a filthy, stained Washington Post<\/em> out from under the slumbering mass of the Burger Queen filling both seats across from me.\u00a0 It\u2019s Sunday\u2019s paper, dispelling the hope that they actually do have cleaners who fix up the trains every night.\u00a0 Flipping through in a feeble attempt to find good, non-sensationalist journalism, I run across an article that hollows my soul.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I see \u201cBethesda-Chevy Chase High School,\u201d my alma mater, and I see \u201cPeace Studies Class,\u201d Colman McCarthy\u2019s enlightening and influential course.\u00a0 I see a picture of two yahoos on the front lawn of the BCC campus and I see the word \u201cbanning.\u201d\u00a0 I say to myself:\u00a0 Just put it down.\u00a0 What you don\u2019t know\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In spring 92, my final semester at BCC, I signed up for Colman McCarthy\u2019s peace studies class.\u00a0 Founded in 1988, the elective was a sort of pass-fail thing, but everyone passed if they showed up even a few times, and McCarthy stood in as a volunteer lecturer.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t represent the school and, repeatedly, bent or broke the rules.\u00a0 Right down to smuggling in live farm animals and controversial speakers (back in the days when you could walk around freely and the two security guards spent all day at McDonalds across the street).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n McCarthy worked for the Washington Post<\/em> and maintained the Center for Teaching Peace \u2013 a weird kitchen table outfit dedicated to \u201cpromoting peace through education.\u201d\u00a0 The class at BCC is one of many supported by the Center. \u00a0\u00a0McCarthy\u2019s main thrust is pacifism and animal rights, focusing these ideals in the classroom setting.\u00a0 It\u2019s a somewhat dated philosophy, too.\u00a0 It\u2019s pacifism as the word is defined, not just anti-war in Iraq, which is how the Post<\/em> article struggled with the idea.\u00a0 It\u2019s animal rights in that it\u2019s our individual responsibility to make the right choices as educated, aware consumers, not to band together and blow shit up.\u00a0 I don\u2019t adhere to the philosophy because I think we should shoot Bush and I love cheeseburgers, but it all made sense.\u00a0 McCarthy isn\u2019t a screeching liberal ignoring every side besides his own.\u00a0 He can see.\u00a0 And he\u2019s a good guy with lots to say.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The class was one of the most fundamentally important high school courses I took. It inspired something rare for a teenaged high school mind:\u00a0 Interaction, thought and focus.\u00a0 It influenced the path I took during the awful transition to college life, how I approached my degree and how I live today.\u00a0 It helped me examine my place \u2013 and role \u2013 in this world.\u00a0 It helped me through rough social and family times.\u00a0 Not in the sense that it gave me dogma to believe in and use as a crutch.\u00a0 The lesson wasn\u2019t save the turkeys or stop the war, the lesson was:\u00a0 Know thyself.\u00a0 Be aware of your world.\u00a0 Of harm, both as it comes to you and as you inflict it upon others. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Was there a bias in the class?\u00a0 Well, of course.\u00a0 Everyone is biased towards something.\u00a0 But the class wasn\u2019t about the bias.\u00a0 McCarthy\u2019s only agenda was to teach us what he knew.\u00a0 He did not enforce his views on us.\u00a0 He was then, and is now, one of the few teachers who actually taught.\u00a0 That is, he inspired, he welcomed opinions, and he didn\u2019t look down on us like so many other teachers.\u00a0 His teachings were simply the foundation for whatever mixed opinions rose out of the class.\u00a0 His work was designed to promote discussion, which he then fielded.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t a chore, we weren\u2019t even a project.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We were a bunch of stupid high school seniors, and he was a highly intelligent and successful journalist, yet he put us on equal footing and heard whatever we said without belittling us or even contradicting those who went against his opinions.\u00a0\u00a0 Find that in the classroom today \u2013 I dare you.\u00a0 We all had value in his eyes, and we all felt it.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n So here we go.\u00a0 I plow through the article, and what are the modern high school seniors thinking?\u00a0 Two kids have come out and petitioned to ban Peace Studies, claiming that McCarthy has a hidden agenda in a Red Scare sort of way, I guess.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what one of the fools said:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI know I’m not the first to bring this up but why has there been no concerted effort to remove Peace Studies from among the B-CC courses?\u00a0 The ‘class’ is headed by an individual with a political agenda, who wants to teach students the ‘right’ way of thinking by giving them facts that are skewed in one direction.\u201d <\/p>\n Let\u2019s name these fruitcakes — Andrew Saraf\u00a0 and his wingman, Avishek Panth.\u00a0 Two 17 year olds with a small view of the world around them. They seek not only to ban an elective, but they have never taken the course, they have sat in on only one class, they have not researched McCarthy, nor have they even spoken with him.\u00a0 I\u2019ll let that sink in for a minute.\u00a0 Because this article got four columns in the Post<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Oh, and those major flaws in their argument aren\u2019t thanks to good reporting or a rebuttal from McCarthy\u2019s camp.\u00a0 These goofballs admitted that they knew nothing about the course in the article.\u00a0 They\u2019re all for stirring up trouble and voicing other people\u2019s ideas but, when asked, they shrug and say they don\u2019t really know anything about it.\u00a0 Yet the Post<\/em> gives them tremendous space.\u00a0 Two kids spouting nonsense get half a page.\u00a0 They attack without provocation and they get their picture in the paper.\u00a0 How does something like that happen?\u00a0 Is it an elaborate and expensive attempt to expose the idiots of the world, or was it just a slow news day?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t know where to begin.\u00a0 Condemn the long condemnable Washington Post<\/em> for legitimizing these two pricks, or wonder what the fuck is wrong with kids these days?\u00a0 Boy, there\u2019s something I never thought I\u2019d say.\u00a0 For Andrew and Avishek, I pity the rest of their lives.\u00a0 If liberal activism is what they fear, then I can only suggest a small, Midwest, religious-affiliated college.\u00a0 Maybe they should sign up with the Mormons and do some missionary work instead of going to school.\u00a0 Because that\u2019s the only way they\u2019ll preserve themselves.\u00a0 McCarthy\u2019s class isn\u2019t even on the same iceberg as what these two idiots will soon see on their college campus.\u00a0 McCarthy listens to the other side.\u00a0 Even back in 92 we had a bloc of conservatives in the class who sniped McCarthy at every turn, and he was thrilled by it.\u00a0 You could speak your mind and he would embrace it, put you to the test, and he didn\u2019t always win the argument.\u00a0 Maybe Andrew and Avishek fear anyone who asks questions, no matter which way they lean.\u00a0 But, wait \u2013 they\u2019re asking questions.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or maybe those two brats are simply parroting what their elders are saying.\u00a0 They lash out against a high school elective without knowing anything about it, based entirely on hearsay and uninformed opinions.\u00a0 Hell, isn\u2019t that how we got involved in this current war?\u00a0 Maybe Andrew and Avishek represent all of us.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s time we just gave up and let the wave of insanity and vicious ignorance take over.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Put those two bastards back in the fish tank.\u00a0 If they manage to make any headway, I\u2019ll just have to egg their houses.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s what we did in 92.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What do high school seniors do in 2006?\u00a0 Rape each others grandmothers?\u00a0 Whatever the modern day pranks are, I\u2019ll do them.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another big worry:\u00a0 Saraf and Panth?\u00a0 Those are suspicious names.\u00a0 I\u2019m not the first to bring this up, but why haven\u2019t these kids been investigated?\u00a0 Based on the names and the picture in the paper, I think they\u2019re terrorists and should be punished immediately. <\/span><\/p>\n
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