The Forest for the Trees

  Note : The following is the first in a series of posts in which I explore the dynamics of liberty in the classroom. These posts represent a thought process that continues to evolve as an exercise in writing as thinking.  Liberté by Eugéne Delacoix I live in a cultural milieu in which the intersection of the personal and political are espoused to have reached an inflection point. What does that mean to me and my classroom? I can only start with what I think I know:  I can say with some degree of confidence that the United States has a history of intertwining the personal and the political. There is the famous revolution in which political difference led to fratricide. And the infamous Civil War in which political difference…well, you get it. And since the New Deal saved American government from the extreme clutches of Fascism and Communism, American foreign and domestic policy has been marked by personal and political commitments to spreading and defending liberty of all...