One of the students in our youth public speaking group delivered an inspiring speech to us this week in our online meeting. It was adapted from a John F. Kennedy speech and urged strength and resolve as we Americans face coronavirus. JFK’s original speech centered around the threat of communism. This student’s adaptation made for a moving and timely speech and served as yet another reminder that our current situation is one of great historical significance.
As we’ve heard (repeatedly) ‘these are unprecedented times’. They are referred to as ‘challenging’ and ‘uncertain’ as well. It is a time that will be remembered 50 and 60 years from now when our children tell their children and grandchildren about it. And it will be remembered long past that time, through whatever media from today persists and whatever communication tools evolve.
Regardless of how coronavirus is remembered, it is something we are facing right now. We have no choice but to address it in our homeschooling. Certainly, we talk about shelter-in-place measures, handwashing, social distancing, etc.
Beyond that, we need to make decisions on how much we want to discuss with our children. And that will depend on their ages as well as each family’s beliefs and values. Your children will look at the pandemic through the lens you present, which is colored by the beliefs and values you hold about social responsibility, politics, and much more.
I don’t want to talk about what my lens is and whether my lens is better than yours. I do want to suggest finding inspirational historical speeches and looking at how to work them into your homeschool curriculum. Wise words from the past can be just as wise and inspiring today. I’ve helped my kids memorize countless speeches and use quotes from them in papers. Always, the words from people like Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth, FDR, Churchill, MLK, as well as many scientists, religious leaders, explorers and artists have seemed relevant and adaptable to current events.
Although JFK’s speech against communism appealed to us as Americans, I’d like to leave you with part of a speech that appeals to us as a world and has been in my head since my youngest researched and wrote a paper about Voyager this past winter.
As the space probe left our solar system, astronomer Carl Sagan convinced NASA to turn Voyager 1 one last time to take photos of our solar system. In the resulting composite image, there is one very small dot. It almost looks like a piece of dust. Here’s what Sagan said of that dot:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
I find this a wonderful reminder that, ultimately, we’re all in this together no matter what our individual perception of the world may be. And that it is through our struggles together that we survive and grow stronger.
I hope that you are able to find many sources of hope and inspiration for yourself and your family during this time.
