In Defense of Teachers

Support, Don't Suppress

Last week on Scottsdale Road, I saw a bumper sticker that I had not seen since the '60s that said: "If you can read this, thank a teacher."

Back in the spring of 1970, while finishing my junior year in high school, our town was rocked by the death of a fellow classmate, one of the four students killed at Kent State. The suburb of Plainview, N.Y., was now on the front page of newspapers. It was also the height of the war in Vietnam, and our school was a powder keg with the inevitable clash of anti-war protesters and what was becoming known as the Silent Majority.

I had a teacher, Pete Sammarco, a wise-cracking, right-of-center sociology/history teacher whose classroom became a headquarters for people trying to understand what was happening and a "safe house" for opposite sides to discuss the Kent State massacre and the conflict in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Sammarco affectionately referred to me as "left-wing hippie scum" as a way to intellectually taunt me, and, while it took a while to sink in, he pushed me to horizons that I would not have explored.

I remember one exchange where I told him we should get out of Vietnam. He asked why, and I told him it was an unjust war. He asked why it was unjust, and I told him we had no business being there. He asked why was it not our place to be there, and I told him it was the military-industrial complex that was pushing this war.

It was clear that rhetoric had gotten the best of me, and he told me to go read about Vietnam and history, and when I knew what I was talking about, regardless of where he and I stood on the issue, to come back and have a conversation.

A few weeks later, with a clearer understanding of the issue, I held my ground and had my first intellectual discourse on the conflict. I learned some things from someone who didn't agree with me, and I imagine he learned some of the fear and frustration of a 17-year-old who was draft eligible. But Jeffrey Miller, a college sophomore, lay dead and bleeding on the front page of Life magazine, and here I was studying for my SATs.

In my career in media and corporate life for four decades, I have always heeded his words to read, look, listen, and respect the other side.

For years, I had given a tip of the hat to the ‘late’ Pete Sammarco.

But something funny happened that week a few years back. While surfing my high school Web site, there was a posting from Pete Sammarco who was not late; heck, he was not even early. His demise was like one of those urban legends.

I traded e-mails with him back then, and after a few references to "left-wing hippie scum," he told me he went to my Web site but had trouble reconciling my career successes with the student he remembered! That was his way of being funny. He also remembered our discussions, his pushing me to test my own limits and expand my horizons, and that as long as I knew what I was talking about, no one could ever take my position away from me, because it was something I owned.

He said, "I would love to play the devil's advocate to get students to think out their thoughts and make intelligent positions. Had you taken a conservative standpoint, I would have played the liberal."

Here in America, the issue of education funding and curriculum is being debated, punched around, supported, and threatened as we try to confront a changing nation and new laws that do anything BUT encourage discourse.

Let us remember, though, there are tens of thousands of Pete Sammarcos in thousands of schools around our country who have touched every one of us, including those in our Legislatures, who debate public education funding. They now decide the fate of teachers who are probably making in one month-maybe-what Pete Sammarco made in a year, five decades earlier.

Why is it we pay the least to the people who influence our children the most?

At least while these true heroes are still with us, let's give them their due by keeping the public education system thriving and driving young minds to a place in life they can look back and say thank you.

Last night, as I was reading about a rash of governments attacking public education. I took out my old high school yearbook and found the message Pete Sammarco wrote. It said, "To Barrymore: Where worms walk, you'll walk big." And you know something? I believe he meant that in a good way. He helped me stand tall.